Continuing With The Dragon Experiments. She's Growing Up A Bit 🤓 And Sprouted Wings! (Well, Or She's

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 30: Crossing the Finish Line

Today is the final day! The last day to write your words and still have them count for your NaNo 2022 project. I have seen many of us come up from behind the last few days, get that final wind and get within a hair of the finish line now. There is still time to get that purple winner's bar and reach your 50000 words. When you are struggling, know we are here to cheer you on! You can do it!

Day 30: Crossing the Finish Line

Tonight: take a moment and feel it down to your bones. You set yourself this task and you faced it down. You are still here at the end of the month. NaNoWriMo is about setting yourself a challenge. It is about succeeding in the extraordinary by attempting something as foolhardy as writing a novel, and something as mundane as creating a daily habit of writing. It requires bravery, persistence, determination and grit. And by still being here, by still writing away till the clock runs out - you are a winner (regardless of purple bar status).

Let's celebrate together tomorrow! For now: let's cheer on anyone who is still writing, who is still pushing on & help eachother through this final glorious day! We can do it!

This year, I rediscovered the absolute joys of reading fanfiction. Exploring characters I love in so many different stories and combinations and settings. It is helping me process this year and rediscover things I find important. Fiction has always meant a lot to me, and I'm feeling the urge to be creative again myself.

So, I decided to start engaging in fandom again by sketchnoting my reactions to some of my favourite stories. (At least for as long as it is fun).

My first sketchnote is in honour of the marvelous @sallyexactly whose Timeless stories I've fallen in love with. The Only Way Out - which I first read over Easter and I now lost count on the rereads - is my favourite headcanon for how the series ended.

But the very first story I read by Sally was The Road Ode. It even inspired me to take a mini roadtrip myself this year (in Europe with very few coronacases & lots of measures).

So, without further ado:

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 24: In Need of Medical Help?

Adventure comes with a price and as writers we often do like to make our main characters pay it. When they get injured, is there a doctor available? Medical staff? Decent supplies? Some painkillers? A nice suite in a hospital or a cold and windy little hut in the middle of nowhere?

Day 24: In Need of Medical Help?

As writers we face our own health challenges: are your wrists strained yet from the excessive typing or are your hands cramping up? Perhaps you tackled a really bad cold or had the flu during November. *waves hi!* NaNoWriMo should not come at the expense of your health, so I wish you all well. We still have a stretch of month to go, so get a good night sleep if you can & let's get this done!

It’s November 1st! NaNoWriMo month! Time to write! We are off!

NaNoWriMo Day 1: Let’s Write!

Is your writing space all prepped and ready? All beautiful and untarnished with the reality of NaNo? Usually for me, everything starts to look messy soon enough, yet for this first day: let’s celebrate the amazing challenge we are taking on! The page is blank and ready to be filled. Perhaps you’ve even got the first words on paper already. The first day is usually filled with excitement: NaNo has finally started and we can write our first words! For today: grab a piece of paper, and write. Enjoy the whimsy, enjoy the glory and fantasize about the amazing feeling of writing your story. If you start to feel anxious and don’t like what you are writing down: introduce some silliness and most importantly: keep writing! You got this!

Please note: last year, I published my Cartoon-of-the-Day including a peptalk every single day. Unfortunately, recovering from surgery is hard and I cannot guarantee the daily update this year round.

(If you enjoy these cartoons, if they help you in any way or brought you a smile: I would love to hear from you. Let’s cheer each other on!)

Lately, I've been fascinated by The Hunger Games AU story A Standing Engagement by @bettsfic featuring Annie Cresta & Finnick Odair.

The Hunger Games is a dark dystopian reality that in so many ways mirrors our own, and it's gruesomeness is portrayed so hauntingly in this story. Annie Cresta is given a different backstory from canon, and lives in the capital. Her past is still dark. Life in the capital is heartbreaking: constant monitoring, putting on a display, not showing your real self and the dark undercurrents of danger & exploitation are always there.

Annie has lost most of her childhood memories, and lives in a world where image matters more than truth. Narration is by necessity unreliable as Annie does not know nor trust in what is truly happening, and doesn't remember except in haunting tainted glimpses. Annie pays Finnick to pretend to love her & act like he truly cares, and therefore, what trust can there be that what Finnick says & does is honest and real?

We see Finnick only through Annie's eyes and supplement that knowledge from what we know from canon: I think that leads us to trust Finnick's honesty in caring for & loving Annie earlier than the story itself warrants. Chapter 8/16 has just been published, and the truth of his love is acknowledged. Yet, that very truth is dangerous & puts them both in jeopardy - which we already know from canon. And so, this story weaves an interesting tale.

Their history - the fisherman's boy and the screaming girl - is referenced in small glimpses and details and I enjoy going back and rereading after new chapters to see earlier hints in a different light, like the best kind of stories do.

In our view of Finnick & his exploitation, we see our own celebrity culture: objectiving to such a degree we no longer acknowledge people as humans. The story is clever in its examination of what that does and means.

Annie & Finnick are both starkly lonely and vulnerable and yet able to reach each other behind all the masks. I'm curious to read where this story is going next now that the monthly meetings can no longer take place and the next Hunger Games are around the corner.

Sometimes, when the world is sad & filled with horrors, I just want to read something heartwarming & feel-good. This Timeless Food Truck AU called Amehrana by @timelesshonesttrailer (RedGold) is a story of found family, the struggle that goes into building & maintaining relationships, and the support and love we offer one another.

Our beloved characters are in love with food, cooking & serving it. Lucy struggles against her mother's expectations. Flynn suffers from PTSD from the war and his marriage to Lorena broke down because of it, but they are still loving friends and co-parents because they both put in the effort & work. In Lorena's words: "And getting where we are... it wasn’t as easy as we make it out to be.”

Emma is snubbed by Rittenhouse (reimagined as a huge & unethical food conglomerate) and carries a grudge against Lucy because of it. Jess is fabulous & brilliant & strong. I particularly love her quote regarding her history with Wyatt: “I tried to be supportive, but if he wasn’t going to help himself, well, it’s not the woman’s job to fix the man.”

This story is heartwarming, but not all smooth sailing. There is conflict, and struggle, and self-doubt. But there is also support in community together. A love for one another in a found and created family. An acceptance & exhuberance that comes from doing what you love while putting in the work.

It's a wonderful story for days when the world feels harsh to be reminded that community and heart is build together through kindness and hard work.

We’re off! NaNoWrMo has officially started! Have the plotbunnies found you yet?

Day 01: First Day – The Magic of Excitement

I always love the atmosphere of NaNo: everyone filled with energy and pursuing their creative experiments. Embrace the magic & congratulations for starting! Every word you write is one you did not have before. Yay us! Whether you have planned everything out or are flying by the seat of your pants – I wish us all a Very Happy NaNo indeed!

The Timeless story Nisam sam by @thealocksly has a kind of visceral sadness to it. (link to her Tumblr post).

It offers glimpses and mentions as to what Lucy went through during her captivity by Rittenhouse. It has a realness to it - a matching of Lucy's stillness & silence on it all on the show. (Even if I think she's a bit more broken in this story than on the show itself).

The way Lucy shrinks in on herself versus the way Flynn respects and cares for her by the act of holding space is wonderful. Flynn's realization that he needs to look at the woman in front of him, rather than the woman he knows from the journal is wonderfully done.

There's a softness to this story. A quiet respect & caring & prelude to healing on her own terms.

It was this amazing story about a farmer who finds one of her chicks hatched a dragon egg by @dycefic that inspired me to try and draw a tiny dragon. I think she's very cute indeed even if she doesn't quite match the dragon description from the tale. @dycefic's stories are wonderous to read and I highly recommend exploring their blog!

The Timeless story No End, No Beginning by MandyCandy is endlessly fascinating. It's a powerful what-if? A reimagining of our history if at certain tipping points things happened differently.

One person's utopia is another's dystopia. This is one of the most far-reaching options I have read on fighting Rittenhouse by dismantling the very structures that made & kept them powerful in the first place.

By whom is history recorded? Lucy is a historian multiple times over in this story and it's powerful & real. Tecumseh is a wonderful character and seeing him in glimpses to see the impact he could have had is powerful. There is so much history & research that went into this story - there's a full bibliography & maps in the final chapter - and it is marvelous. As a European, American & Canadian history is not something that was touched upon a lot and stories like these bring me tipping points that I like to read more about.

Jiya is so resourceful & necessary to the plan in this story & Rufus likewise has a tangible effect on history.

It's a powerful reimagining. The story takes a bit to come into its own (as it was written & revised on the go as we often see with fanfiction) but stick with it. It's well-worth it.