NaNoWriMo 2019 Part 4/5

So when typing this I'm at 14,303 words out of the 50K goal.  I haven't utilized a single one of the virtual write-ins on YouTube, but will likely do so this week at some point.  For those who've managed to reach the 50K, congratulations.  For those that haven't yet, keep trying.  I once filled an entire notebook - 5 subject - in only a few hours.

When a person gets struck with the inspiration they need for a story, the words can and will flow beyond anything one might realize.  I can't tell you the number of partial works I have because I get struck with inspiration for a short period of time then have it die out.  With all the computer issues I've had in the past, I'm surprised I'm still working on them and on this blog.  It doesn't mean I'm not trying to keep going with my blog.  I do have several ideas for blogs and there are blogs that I didn't take the time to put together back when they would have been relevant.

There may be a lot of words left for me to write to "win" NaNoWriMo, but that's not how I win.  The goal is typically a 50K word story that one has to go back and edit.  My personal goal is to write.  If I manage to write anything at all, I've won.  So I'm still working through the dinner for my crossover which is definitely taking its own life.  Why do they make you think it's going to make a zig but then have you write three zags instead?

So good luck and keep writing for those of us who are still not at the 50K goal and for those who have reached it?  Please refer to the first paragraph.

NaNoWriMo 2019 Part 3/5

At the time I started typing this I had 9337 words, not including the words in this blog post.  Part of this has been me trying to find out what shows are on Disney+ for a post I had started and will likely turn into a four-part blog with links to one hundred reviews, but that would be a future post, most assuredly.  In my Assassination Classroom Yu-Gi-Oh crossover, I have gotten them to the restaurant and they were last discussing the condiments that Karma brought. Joey was assuring Tristan that the condiments wouldn't actually hurt any of them.  I know male pregnancy has occurred in the past of when this fic takes place, but it isn't common and they keep it a secret just like they do about Korosensei.  I have a feeling though that this could bring forth a large number of secrets during the dinner.  After all, the children don't have to keep a filter on their mouths at family dinners which is what this is despite two outsiders joining and Joey was one of the pregnant males.  Like I said though, this doesn't focus on that time period nor is male pregnancy a common thing.  He was not pregnant because he went through a gender transformation either.  The lore behind why he was able to get pregnant will likely be explained, possibly in bits and pieces, but it will be explained in the fic.  All I'm going to put about it is that it's unique to only a few of the Yu-Gi-Oh males.  No one else is able to so far as anyone knows and if there are others, they aren't going to come forth in this fic.  I also don't plan to keep this fic going with sequels and a huge number of chapters. 

So if I manage to finish this and get it posted maybe I can return to some of my past works.  I do have another where male pregnancy is possible and Harry ends up with a miscarriage, but there is so much more to it than that and male pregnancy is something that I personally am unlikely to make the main point of my stories.  The miscarriage alerts Professor Snape and Madame Pomfrey aware of Harry being abused/tortured depending on how a person looks at things.  Personally, I feel Umbridge's treatment of Harry and the other students is torture, but that's not what this post is supposed to be about.  This supposed to be about my current WIP(work in progress) and how I'm doing in NaNo working on said WIP.  So, just a small heads up, I still don't have a title for the thing.  I have it labeled as YGO AC under my works on the new NaNoWriMo website.  There's a really good chance I'll finish the story but still need an appropriate title and yes I do want to continue working on Caged and A New Time, but I've had computer issues that lost parts of each work and trying to figure out where those particular stories were going has been a little harder.  Caged will be much harder because the inspiration for that was a dream and the dream that started has already been recorded into the story, while A New Time was my take on a crossover between Harry Potter and D. Grayman.

I also plan to eventually get back to my original works especially those set in Rock Falls though the Eerie Estates setting could be fun to delve into again...  For those who are on track or ahead in their writing, congrats on keeping up or completing the goal early.  For those like me who are still struggling along and eking out a few words here and there, just keep plugging along.  If it weren't for blog posts and various posts and other writings, I wouldn't have even hit 5K, but words are words and who knows what will be needed for that story when you're done with the editing and revision! 

Streaming Sites

This past week a new streaming service that people have been anxiously waiting for finally became available.  Unlike so many others, I was excited but I wasn't about to spend money on something that I might not get to fully enjoy, after all, Disney+ only advertised Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and National Geographic even if there were articles that indicated there would be a bundle deal that included Hulu and ESPN.  My husband was more than agreeable to this.  So we canceled the WWE and Hulu subscriptions we had and we'll very likely be getting Disney+ before the end of the month.  Once that happens, my writing will definitely take a major nosedive since I've heard the series So Weird is fully available on it. 

I've searched online to find the series to buy on DVD, but never did, not even on the official movie site!  I'm not a huge fan of Star Wars, nor do I care for Star Trek before anyone starts to try to call me a Trekkie.  I may be a geek/nerd, but that doesn't mean I have to be typical or stereotypical about it!  We also own a number of movies - not just Marvel, Disney, or Pixar, but independent films and Paramount Pictures, but a lot of Disney.  It doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that I have everything that will be on Disney+ as evidenced by the knowledge that one of my absolutely favorite television shows is available on it while I've been unable to get it.  I have managed to get Dark Angel and most of Leverage of DVD (still need season 5...)

While Disney is no longer on Netflix, it doesn't mean there aren't shows on Netflix that I won't be watching.  They have exclusive content just as Hulu does that are, in my honest opinion, worth spending time watching.  They also have shows that aren't on Hulu and don't forget that streaming is only one part of Netflix.  Originally, Netflix didn't stream.  It was basically just an online Blockbuster (for those who don't understand, Blockbuster was actually a brick and mortar movie rental.  It started with VHS tapes at least when I was a child before DVDs and the internet.  It wasn't just a local movie rental either.  I'm sure a quick Google search can help you find out more, but suffice to say, good luck finding one anymore.  They died before several small-town movie rental businesses did.)  When Netflix first started they would mail the DVDs and charge your card for the length of time you kept it.  I don't remember all of the particulars, but it added streaming as an alternative, but it doesn't and never had their full library available for streaming.  Nowadays, you can no longer rent since they rely solely on streaming services and that consumers are more likely to watch their shows and movies online using their internet services.

I'm so thankful we have DVDs that we can watch because weather happens as does just general other reasons for power outages or internet blank-outs.  Life happens, so it's nice to have back-up plans.  Whether or not things will go great for Disney+ will depend on their competitors and what they do with the vast amount of content at their fingertips.  They have to compete with Netflix which has constantly changes content and there are rumors that they may team up with Nickelodeon.  If they got Nickelodeon and say Funimation to bundle up with them, Disney+ would definitely have some competition.  Americans are aware of anime, mostly thanks to Toonami, but Sailor Moon, DBZ(DragonBall Z), and so many others made kids of the late nineties and early 2000s (so born in late '80s to early '90s) search for more.  It started a wave of other culture awareness that also made us aware of more to the world than what we learned about in our little worlds. 

Anyway, Disney may have access to Marvel which means a wealth of characters as well as multiple possible storylines and that's just from the well-known Marvel characters.  They have their old Disney shows, many of which left fans wishing for more - looking at Gargoyles and So Weird among others.  Some shows need to be redone to set them up to what we are yelling about today, but to do so will definitely offend some.  They won't want anything to change what they loved.  It's like the outcry when every single superhero movie or series has ever been made and books to movies:  people will compare and contrast and find one version better than the others.  Those who grew up with the original will always prefer it.  They'll find problems in how things are portrayed.  Things that have been changed or left out which changed some of the dynamics while pulling forth dynamics that maybe weren't as apparent in the original (this sentence is mainly targeting Harry Potter which is rife with missing depth and more obvious depictions of certain foreshadowed futures, but it's not the only nor is it the first offender, just the easiest to explain because very few don't have any idea what Harry Potter is about even if they've never read the books or seen the movies.)  Others will find problems with the original shows either because of the effects or because they willfully ignore the time period its set in or they see the stereotypes and take offense (not that they shouldn't in some cases, but look at when the show/movie was made before arguing its validity and the setting!)  I mean something set in the 80s or as old as set in the early 1800s would treat certain types of people severely differently than we do now or how they may have been treated in years before A.D.  It doesn't mean the thoughts of how they were treated would have been different. 

There is a movie set in a time period that is very much a decent representation of the time period and place it's set in - Mary Poppins.   No, I'm not talking about Jane, Mary, Michael, Mr. Banks or even the servants, chimney sweeps, or birdwoman (though they all can help my case)  I'm talking about Mrs. Banks, the children's mother.  There's a scene talking about their plans on a day Mary Poppins is supposed to be off.  She said she had to attend a rally and she wore a political-based sash.  Mrs. Banks was a fighter for women's rights.  For the time period and place it is set in, it makes sense that at least one of the several women in the show would be fighting women's rights.  And this was a Disney movie.  Thank you, Disney, for giving a mother who was willing to try to make things better for her daughter, even if she didn't spend much time with said daughter.

Netflix, however, tends to really delve into the darker things and nostalgia that plagues our generations with shows like Stranger Things, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, among several other shows.  There are several classics and reality shows available through Hulu, though.  That's not to forget about other streaming services - YouTube, Amazon Prime, Funimation, PlutoTV and Crunchyroll just to name a few.  Wherever you find the shows you enjoy, keep an eye for things that change such as the variety of content on others.  If you have a to watch/rewatch/finish watching list like I do, you may find it growing with all the original content that appears on different streaming sites and spin-offs and crossover episodes for whatever you may be watching not to mention reboots and movies...wow, Buffy, Charmed, Doctor Who, Bleach, Supernatural, CSI, JAG, etc. have really made things hard for me to truly catch up on things for story ideas I might have or blog posts...

NaNoWriMo 2019 Part 2/5

So now that there's a whole 'nother week under our writer's belts, I've got to admit I haven't done much.  At the time I'm typing this, I've only reached 5436 words.  Saturday, Nov 9 was supposed "Double Donation Day" but I didn't even realize until rather late in the day (just before typing the majority of this post!)  Still, it doesn't mean I won't attempt to get my word count up there and reach that 50K word goal.  Thankfully I have the first chapter of my story - my fanfiction - written, though editing is likely to change it in some ways.  It may add words, remove them or alter in other ways.  I've had to rework an entire chapter before and currently, I have several stories that are requiring me to remember various things.  Maybe one day I'll remember how the train ride chapter of my Winding Circle Harry Potter crossover and figure out how the circle alters the final confrontation and how the changes they've already made are going to affect the future.

For those who are still attempting to get to that lofty goal - good luck; keep writing!  For those who've reached it - congratulations!

NaNoWriMo 2019 Part 1/5

NaNoWriMo has begun again and other than a large number of fanfictions that I want to finish as well as a large number of originals that I want to either start/restart or finish I don't know what I want to work on.  Most likely I will be working on fanfics which I've got three that I think I'll be working on.

The first is a crossover I've been working on for quite some time.  Harry Potter instead of being taken into the Dursley household was put up for adoption through an orphanage the police ended up putting him in.  He was adopted by a foreign couple who would later divorce and separate him from his sister.  He would find friends and go through a lot of weird stuff before being found once again by the British Wizarding World.  His friends would not let him go alone when he gets told about how he's expected to be someone who is said to have been targeted by a serial killer and been the killer's only survivor.  With Seto Kaiba funding the trip, wizarding Britain is definitely going to get a wake-up call as they keep trying to say that Katsuya Jonouchi is Harry Potter and that despite having never met the boy or talked to him, they know everything about him.  Obviously, this one is a Harry Potter and Yu-Gi-Oh crossover.

The second is a Harry Potter Gundam Wing crossover I started recently.  This one is set at the end of fourth year when the students get off the train and instead of going straight home, Harry and many other muggleborn and raised are taken to a government building to be registered in accordance with a new law that was introduced to help locate families that have been separated.  I haven't yet decided exactly what gets discovered but I do know that a paternal family member for Harry is found.  I don't know if it'll be a sibling, cousin, or even his own father, I'm still trying to figure that out.  Hell, it might be both a sibling and his father, after all, he can't be sure what he saw in the graveyard, can he?  

Finally, on the fanfic scene, I have the idea for a crossover between Assassination Classroom and Yu-Gi-Oh.  It's set after all the students have finished school and are well established in their careers and for some families.  After having been told that they had to find a new school for the Kaiba and Moto children, Joey goes to check out a school meeting an old classmate as the teacher for the children placed in the most problematic class - Nagisa.  In my mind, there is a lot more going on and the issue is the secrets that Tristan and Joey are keeping puts the friends from both sets against each other.  Other than that I don't know how long I'll make this story or if it'll be a one-shot capture of that specific instance. 

I'm likely to work on other stories as well.  Some are likely to be original pieces, but there will also be other fanfics included.  After all, these are only three fanfics and I can guarantee that I have a minimum of twenty that have been started either on a computer or on paper and I'm constantly finding more ideas for fanfics.

As for my progress for NaNoWriMo, I've managed 3861 words in the first two full days.  Hope you guys are getting some writing done!