Random Ramblings CCCV · 9:00pm Aug 18th, 2018
IN WHICH I ALTER THE PAST
Much music has dropped lately. Here's something new: An aspiring 15-year-old singer-songwriter's first music video.
The girl is Aiko Yamaide. Her song is called "Smile" and it instantly snapped me out of a long-standing funk. Anyway…
I could spend this blogpost gushing about Aiko, but instead I'd like to tell y'all about something that happened to me a couple of days ago.
A new reader who had just gotten into SRA asked me why all of my later stories had such round word counts – my Twilight Evictus parody is exactly a thousand words; Sunset visits Dr Wolf is exactly 2000; AMDQ is exactly 9500, and so on. The reason has to do with how my OCD manifests. Round numbers -- in this case ending in a 0 or 5 -- make me happy, and so for over a year now I've endeavoured to have every single one of my stories have a word count that ends in a 0 or 5.
Because of how FimFic interprets "smart" apostrophes created in MS Office, the word-counts for all of my pre-Gdocs stories (early 2018) are artificially inflated. This resulted in, for example, Sunset Shimmer: Spider Queen, which originally was listed as having exactly 4000 words, suddenly shrinking to 3930 when I made a minor edit. Yes, that still ends in a 0, but in that case I want to restore the original count, so I need to add seventy words across the story.
Basically, I've been going back and re-editing many of my old stories to give them OCD-certified word counts. In most cases, the final count lists fewer words than the original despite actually having more words. In other cases, I added enough words that the count increased.
The upside of doing this is it allows me to fix some minor continuity errors in SRA and the Burritoverse. It also let me finally put a song reference into Sonata's first Burrito story (it was the only one that lacked a music shout-out), so it now satisfies the rules of what a Burrito fic should be. I also got to weave several more lyrics into the dialogue of A Day In The Park while trying to get its word count back up to its original 1,600 (it ended up at 1,625).
So, yeah. That's been what I've been doing lately. Cleaning up old stories no one will ever read just to satisfy my own desires. Very soon I should have all of my works "fixed". Because it's tedious as fuck, it'll probably still take me a couple days or so
In the meantime, I'm still trying to think up a title for that Rarity talking to AJ story that is completed but not up on the site.
To anyone who is new to my work, I want to make it very clear that I haven't seen much of the show (or EQG) since early 2016, so best not talk to me about "canon" at this point -- I don't know it, haven't had time to catch up, and honestly don't care.
The above goes double for the EQG shorts, of which I have seen none. My own EQG-verse has, I'm sure, diverged so wildly from canon that, once I've finished the Sunsarity stories and Burritoverse, anything I publish after will be tagged AU. This includes another completed story in my backlog: Anon-A-Fix. Granted, even if I was up-to-date with the specials, I'd still AU that one since canon Trixie isn't a sex-starved nympho with a thing for Sunset.
My EQG-verse has no fewer than four girls with crushes on Sunset Shimmer – three have been revealed in-story (Rarity, Sonata, plus Trixie in a throwaway line from Sunset). The fourth has not been mentioned, will not be for quite awhile due to my slow working pace, and it will probably surprise you to find out who she is. Here's a hint: it's not Twilight, either one of them.
Oh! Right. That's why I've been very emphatic in saying that nothing after Rainbow Rocks is canon to my universe. For the purposes of my world-building, it is VITAL that the two Twilights have never met, nor do any of the CHS Manes or Sunset know about Sci-Twi.
Some people who saw my only story thus far in which Sci-Twi appeared might know where I plan to go with this, or they may be surprised too.
Suffice to say, this is something I've been planning for years, and I've finally started to lay some breadcrumbs now that SRA is behind me.
In Real-Life news, my second package from Japan, this one carrying a bunch of Blu-rays of live shows by Japanese Technopop queens Perfume, shipped on Thursday, but it got delayed twice -- first in Tokyo and then at customs in Ohio, so it missed its anticipated delivery time of yesterday evening. I'm hoping it'll show up today, as it's now left Cincinnati Airport (which is legally in Kentucky and happens to be one of DHL's major sorting hubs in the USA; it's also an airport I preferred to go through when flying to the East Coast because it's not as absurdly huge as DFW or ATL).
Also, my third and last package from Japan will ship sometime next week. This one is from Amazon JP and is mostly though not entirely Blu-rays of major Babymetal concerts that I wasn't able to easily obtain here in the States, along with preorders for Perfume's newest studio album that came out Wednesday and Aiko's (that little girl up above the fold) first single, Smile.
I am looking forward to all the music and concert footage coming my way.
Also, Eastern Star Media -- a.k.a. the protectors of old anime -- are and have been releasing a lot of old-school stuff I want to buy, including a shit-ton of Lupin the 3rd.
BUT, before I can splurge on da animes, I need to wait for the siding to be replaced on my home -- they replaced the windows a week ago but they're backed up on the siding side of things, so it may be next month before they get to me. Sigh. More waiting.
Peace out!
I almost had a nervous breakdown because of that word count change. After that one site update, (unaware that they’d changed the counting system) I happened to go into all the chapters that had “boinking” in them and added an asterisk to those chapter titles. This way, readers who just want to read those scenes could do so (or avoid them), but not long after I made the changes, I noticed the story’s overall word count had dropped by about 6K words!
This freaked me out, obviously, because I assumed some of it had been deleted somehow, and I thought I was going to have to read through 475K words to figure out what had gone “missing.” Fortunately, my old phone was still around, and its browser happened to be on my stats page from before the change, so I was able to click on the blue dots to compare those from the current word counts in each chapter, and I figured out what’d happened from there. Turns out only the chapters I’d added the asterisks to were the ones that had changed, because the new count system was applied when I edited the titles. Nothing was missing, of course—aside from half of my hair.
Anyway...
Hope you enjoy your new music collection!
I hate OCD. :( It's so troublesome. I've been on both sides of it, though more the receiving side than the experiencing side. Have you ever watched Monk or read the books?
Hope you get your packages soon! :D
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I own all 8 seasons on DVD and the first book, and my mother bless her heart bought me a Monk T-shirt and a coffee mug. Is answer question?
The thing where Tony Shalhoub holds out his hands while examining a scene, I've done that since before the show even existed while looking for things (which I suck at). But I'm not that bad really. I'm not a neat-freak -- my room and desks have always been messy; my mother is the neat freak -- but I do hate it when anything is out of place or a pattern is interrupted. I'm also a germaphobe who hates his hands being dirty. I don't carry wipes with me, but I wash my hands at least a few times a day and freak out if someone sniffles or coughs around me.
I'm non-functional for completely different reasons.
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That answers it thoroughly. :D You can get more Monk merch on Redbubble I think. <3
That's honestly so cool. :D I haven't watched Monk in awhile but I want to do it again. Maybe sometime we can find it on the internet to watch it together?
Also: Natalie or Sharona?
Also I've read all the books except the last. They're REALLY good and fun!
https://www.redbubble.com/people/tom5699/works/29875806-cast-from-monk?cat_context=u-prints&grid_pos=1&p=poster&rbs=3b350809-160b-4564-97b9-cc7562f5f611&ref=shop_grid&searchTerm=Monk%20TV%20show%20poster&iaCode=u-print-poster
https://www.redbubble.com/people/livtees/works/27852247-unless-im-wrong?cat_context=u-prints&grid_pos=3&p=poster&rbs=1dfaddd3-82c3-477d-92dd-0a81561ded68&ref=shop_grid&searchTerm=Tony%20Shalhoub%20poster&iaCode=u-print-poster
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Julie. Most underrated & underutilized character in the entire show.
(can't really choose between the women because I don't want to choose wrong)
Honestly, many episodes I don't really have much desire to rewatch, though some are always fantastic. My anime backlog is a bit more important, and I haven't been addressing that lately 'cause I haven't felt like it.
I really should read more of the Monk books since I enjoyed the first one so much.
Outside of FimFic, I've been brainstorming escalating insane stories about why Yui Mizuno, Babymetal's "cute quiet one", has been MIA since December. My latest
fakeTotally Legit theory involves her being kidnapped by the American government for nefarious yet amazing purposes (also racism because Trump and Attorney General Massa Beauregard, plus Yui's English isn't very good).4922679
Lol, I meant between the two assistants, but yeah, she is underutilized.
That's np. I understand. That's kind of why I haven't watched it again in some time. The episodes are entertaining when the reruns are on TV but you don't always want to go out of your way to watch, you know?
You should, they're great! Especially the one where Monk goes to Germany. :D
And lol oh my God.