Reverb10 (Day 1 to 8)

So, I was bored. Surfing through the NaNo forums like any good lurker should.

And I found this. 750words.com

So, I joined, and started yammering away on my day.

It was fun, it was easy (thank NaNo) and I finished it quite fast.

So, now I joined reverb10. Naturally, I'm compelled to finish the backlog.

Day 1 of 31.
December 1 – One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you? (Author: Gwen Bell)

Writing. Or friends. I'm sticking with writing, because let's face it. I've been doing that for the whole of this year, and like what Stalin said, quantity has a quality of its own.

I started this year with CAP. One of my friends got in, and throughout this year, I've been cheered on by her to get in. I don't know whether I should, or whether I'd get in (Adventure/Fantasy isn't something the judges like a lot anyway), but I had lots of fun writing. All that came into fruition in November, when I joined NaNoWriMo. My characters, with a year's worth of non-stop development was easy to work with. The plot solved itself by 20k, 2 weeks in, and the last 30k was an exercise in developing subplots, and bringing things to their logical conclusion, then a few more steps after that, and pulling characters out of my *ahem*

Next year, friends. Never had many friends, and of the small circle I have, not many otakus.

This year, I met more. Mainly through Facebook. Then we all went to AFA, TC, STGCC, and on Sunday, lots of us will be going to EOY. Met lots of them, and I'm good friends with 3 of them. We all watch different things, but we've been exchanging recommendations. Like Durarara. Hetalia. Certain shows which minors shouldn't watch. The whole list. I'm into the slice-of-life kind of stuff. Odd, yes. Still…

The way I'm writing it, I could exchange "friends" and "writing" and nobody would know the difference. XD

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Day 2 of 31.
December 2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it? (Author: Leo Babauta)

Sleep? Well, I'm not eliminating that.

Anime? Inspiration. Quite a lot, no, all of my characters all are heavily influenced by them. Two of them draw a ton of shout outs from anime. One of them is Japanese. Practically all of them have major traits from them. Three of them have cosplayed. Alright, so they did that to rob a bank, and they're supposed to be the protagonists, but still.

NaNo forums? Hello? NaNo forums? Enough said.

Facebook? Well, that's mainly to stay connected with my friends, and I'm not giving up my friends to write more.

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Day 3 of 31.
December 3 – Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). (Author: Ali Edwards)

I vote for AFAX. My first anime convention. There are always a lot, but this was the first I attended. I kinda got into the whole thing in January, and said, "Screw it, I'm in, might as well go all the way." sometime in late-June.

It was pretty dull at first, and I went to watch Disappearance in Hall 402. That was when things became fun. People cheered for the movie. The movie premier (complete with subtitles) in Southeast Asia. I would have cheered more, had I not watched the camrip, complete with subtitles from the light novel. The subs were of a lower quality, made up for the fact that it was superior in image and sound quality.

Woo!

It was joy, watching Kyon stumble through, wondering what the hell was happening. Watching Kyon get attacked by Mikuru for being a dumbass in denial. He fought giant cave crickets in pocket dimensions, surely he'd be more open-minded. Watching Kyon fight against himself whether to go back. Watching Kyon decide, and kick himself into the table. It makes sense in context.

Then he gets stabbed by Ryoko in the gut, and almost bleeds to death.

But yeah, no matter what you say, Ryoko has something good in her, even if her kernel seems to be coded around stabbing people. Yuki would know best about Ryoko, yet she still chose to bring her back when she recreated the world. The world. Where she dumped Haruhi and Itsuki aside to form a couple. She still chose Ryoko. Isn't that sweet.

But I'm digressing again. The whole makeshift cinema cheered for Kyon. Winced in sympathetic pain for Kyon. Averted their eyes when he tried to convince he knew Mikuru by mentioning the birthmark on her chest.

For the three hours, nobody cared. They were cheering Kyon on. Haruhi was gone, and that's never a good sign, especially when the girl who tried to kill you took over her seat.

So, the whole thing ended, I bought my T-shirts, and my strap, and I wandered around. Things became boring. Very.

I remembered that I was going to meet my friend, who I shall name Stef for ease. I called Stef, said hi, and started looking for her.

It's not tough. She's still the petite meganekko I remembered. I'll so go after her if I was male. And she was with her camera. Petite meganekko with blue hair and a cynical view on life. What more could you ask for?

I met up with her, and she was looking for another guy, named Gabriel. According to his description, he'll be easy to spot, because, in his words, he wasn't cosplaying, but everybody just assumes he is.

Damn, he was right. He vaguely looked like he was from an anime. Just one that nobody knew. Gabe kept insisting that that was his casual wear, and we left it at that.

We went for lunch, because her friends were off at 402 watching something. Most probably waiting for Kaname. It was like her big brother and big sister was watching over her. Hmm… Stef/Gabe?

No, I shouldn't be thinking about that.

Focus!

We went to Burger King, got the food and went off to eat outside 401 while we waited for Stef's friends to come out of 402. We chatted about Durarara. Stef was thinking of cosplaying as female!Izaya, while her senior cosplayed as female!Shizuo. Because she was a major Izaya fangirl. Can't blame her. He's a magnificent bastard, as TvTropes would put it.

She's just a tad too short. Give her a loli character, and she could pull it off well. Give her a shota, and she could crossplay, given enough encouragement.

Never mind. Mini!Female!Izaya then. I'm thinking of getting her a hardy, pink, clamshell disposable handphone so that she could do the whole "stomping on handphones" act.

Where do we get a fake trashcan anyway?

So, her friends come out of 402, and made a beeline to the food. Quite a lot of conversation, including one where Gabriel mentions how Stef and I would make a nice yuri couple, because we look similar, except that I'm the older sister who teaches her sex ed.

Go to hell, Gabe. I'm so not doing that. But yeah, acting out implied yuri is fine with me. Hugging, BST, UST, all that's fine. I asked him to crossplay as Miku or Rin first. We agreed. He crossplays, I do implied yuri with Stef.

We hang around there for a while more, then Stef decided to change back into civvy. The wig's a mess. We went downstairs to the third floor, where there was a ton of cosplayers, with at least 2 Mikus, and half a dozen Bleach characters. And many more.

We sat around, near the escalator, just chatting, watching cosplayers, and Gabe suddenly ran back upstairs to look for nekomimi.

Well, what the hell?

We went up to Hall 404, because 401 was shutting down and 402 was going to be used for the concert. There were a ton of cosplayers there. A Lelouch was chatting with a Konata, who was cosplaying as Haruhi (yes, a girl was cosplaying as Konata, cosplaying as Haruhi). The Konata!Haruhi had a daughter with her, cosplaying as chibi!Haruhi.

She was very cute.

Gabe went back to look for nekomimi, and we sat there, again, chit chatting. At some point, we started teaching Stef yaoi terminology.

Completely uncalled for, and extremely awkward when her senior started wondering aloud whether I'd be the seme or uke if Male!Stef and Male!Me got together.

Right. Try not to say that out loud. Especially when you start by pointing out that both of us are ukes.

We went for dinner after that, at a food court. It was mostly silent, except for the constant encouragement we gave to Gabe at pursuing crossplay. It came down to Miku (complete with Grade S zettai ryouiki (He's a Type B tsundere as far as we're concerned)), Ritsu (long enough hair, and he's energetic enough) and Kyonko.

We split off, afterwards, and Stef, her senior and I went back together.

Oh well.

Not very vivid. I digress too much.

But that. Was. Freaking. Long.

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Day 4 of 31.
December 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year? (Author: Jeffrey Davis)

Wonder? Sorry. Too cynical for that usually. It's less of wonder, more of general excitement.

It's simple, really. TvTropes. We had a series of heartwarming Hetalia fics, all derived from that infamous Hetalia kink meme. Except that it was used for good. Link here.

Nobody Dies, an awesome fanfic. Link somewhere in my previous posts.

Basically, pure awesome creates wonder. Which quickly forces me to note it down for future use.

For example, ADAM fighting Cthulhu in AGE!ND. Antimatter bombs deployed against Israfel, and Devastator used against the other Israfel. An ingeniously small-scale nuclear device against the Israfelim infestation. Weapons from an alternate dimension. Using said alternate dimension as a weapon. Weaponizing technobabble. A three-man army (alright, two, since one of them can't really fight) beating up two dozen men and winning with nary a scratch. Shooting a giant crab into space with a Gravity Gun.

The list goes on and on.

So, wonder, excitement, whatever turns me into a squealing fangirl stems mainly from TvTropes. Who said TvTropes would ruin your life anyway?

Liars.

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Day 5 of 31.
December 5 – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)

Let go. Heh. Nothing.

Then again, I didn't start with much. My friendship with people *coughKellycough* is slowly drifting apart.

Note to self, EOY. Find her during EOY. Introduce her to my friends. At the very least, it'll slow down the drift.

Hopefully. ::sadface::

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Day 6 of 31.
December 6 – Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it? (Author: Gretchen Rubin)

This is easier to answer. My NaNovel. 131 pages of great fun. Excluding that, 3D papercraft dolls of Rin and Gumi. Both are vocaloids that I love. Kakure Otaku de Gomennasai's my favorite Gumi song, and Rin is Pantsu Nugeru Mon.

Right… Let's move on to something else for now. I already mentioned my NaNovel earlier, and the papercrafts took me… 3 hours in total? The head's a pain to glue to the face, but once that's done, it's easy. The artist's DA name is desubunny.

I want to write an interquel for my story, so I'm looking for an app to do that for my computer. Failing that, my iPhone. We'll start in March or June.

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Day 7 of 31.
December 7 – Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? (Author: Cali Harris)

Community?

NaNo forums. I always did prefer lurking. NaNo forums was the exception. It was so… communal, for lack of a better word. The MLs hung around. The Reaching 50,000 forums was filled with crazy ideas that could work. Reference Desk was filled with awesome people calculating ridiculous stuff. Dare threads in the genre forums were filled with stuff I might have taken to advance my plot.

Found quite a few like-minded friends from different countries.

And yes, cosplaying is easier when there's Halloween in your country.

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Day 8 of 31.
December 8 – Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful. (Author: Karen Walrond)

What makes me different? I love anime and manga. I'm a fan of yuri and yaoi. My iPhone is filled with anime songs. I write a lot, and I daydream about my characters. My crazy, yet awesome characters who can't seem to follow a plot without lampshading the hell out of it, or "improving" it with firepower and/or explosives.

I expect one of them to shout "BOOM FOR THE BOOM GOD" sooner or later.

It's just amazing, when I know what my classmates talk about. They're more casual readers and watchers (does such a term exist?), and when I can chat with them about it, it brightens up our day.

Mabel, Reverb10-ing