That's right, I succeeded at writing 50,000 words in 30 days. If you want to get technical I wrote 50,208 words for the story that I was working on for NaNoWriMo plus another 8,000 or so more words toward a little side project story arc for one of my fanfics to appease some of the jealousy that resulted from my tendency to keep my word count at least a day or so ahead during the month of November. Nevertheless, it turned out well and the story I put together for NaNoWriMo actually managed to reach a coherent conclusion. That is to say, it provides a notoriously evil sequel hook for what will eventually become the next installment in the series. I'm a very bad person like that.

Anyway, now that I'm free to take a break from working myself ragged I still feel like doing a bit more writing so I will probably give some attention to the fanfics I have been neglecting. I might also have a few other schemes in the works, but I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to be able to execute those for the moment. Only time will tell how those turn out, but hopefully it will be fun.

Over the weekend I decided it might be a good idea to take a break from writing fanfics this week so that I can recharge my creative energies for NaNoWriMo. Inevitably all I've wanted to do since I made that decision is speculate about some of the finer points of certain fandoms are write about them. I have plenty of perfectly good video games that I haven't beaten yet to keep me busy, but a lot of the time I find myself unable to concentrate on them because of the numerous ideas that keep popping inside my head. At the rate I'm going I'll probably end up writing another one shot before the week is through. I don't usually mind that my imagination tends to work overtime, but this was supposed to be a self-imposed vacation.

I'm going to blame the Shaman King fandom for this. I keep finding way too many interesting things to think about. It's gotten almost as bad as letting me speculate about the significance of the Dark Ocean. I'm just going to pretend I haven't been working on a Shaman King & Digimon crossover to go along with that tangent.

Thinking really is a most dangerous pastime indeed.

The last month or so can be explained by the following:

Scribblenauts
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

It is also possible that between the releases of each of these games I might have been deteriorating what little sanity I have by trying time and again to clear the remaining facilities in the Battle Frontier of both Pokemon Emerald Version and Pokemon Platinum Version. It might have started as an exercise in trial and error, but by this point it's become more along the lines of speculating about just how convoluted my next spectacular defeat will be. Inevitably, the more effort I put into perfecting my team, the more ridiculous the strategies employed by my computer controlled opponents become although that Meganium with Sweet Scent, Leech Seed, Double Team and Light Screen definitely takes the cake. I'm still betting it was holding a Bright Powder, but since it didn't belong to me I will never know with any certainty.

Scribblenauts is fun and I would probably still be doing my best to abuse the English language to its fullest potential if not for the fact that I got sidetracked by a game with a little more plot. Oh, and the sexy bishounen that comprise the better part of Organization XIII, but then that wasn't really my excuse for wanting to play in the first place. A high percentage of the conversations between Roxas and Axel were clearly meant as fan service to the vast population of yaoi fangirls who would want to see more about their blooming relationship. I still haven't made it very far, but I've definitely been liking what I see. My brother has already expressed an interest in playing himself once I finish, but since he doesn't have his own Nintendo DS (it was either lost or stolen) that might pose a little bit of a problem seeing as I tend to use mine an awful lot.

In other news, I manage to persuade my mom to get me some plastic storage units during our last outing to Wal*Mart. I got one of the nice ones that has drawers like a dresser to relocate some of the stuff that's been sitting in boxes in my room since I moved in so as to reduce the amount of space my stuff occupies in the room. I also got a miniature version to organize the stuff that had been accumulating on top of my dresser. The empty boxes were transported into the dining room where they have been reassigned to store the recyclable cardboard and paper products until we are able to dispose of them properly. So, now I have more functional space in my room and it's actually possible to walk around the dining room table--two birds with one stone. I had some other, larger storage bins from awhile back that were originally going to be situated in the attic, but since that never became a reality and they had been sitting in the hallway blocking the hall closet I decided that it would be too difficult to carrying them up into the attic anyway and took the initiative to carry them down under the house instead. Since it's mostly old collectible toys that I'm not going to be using in the foreseeable future I figure they might as well be out of the way and they should be perfectly safe under the house. The heating unit is down there so it isn't like anything is going to freeze down there anyway.

I've been doing a little bit of writing on and off. And I'm also planning on attempting NaNoWriMo again this year, but that's still a little ways off.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to lately. Now I'm just going to get back to enjoying the dreadful sounds of CD's loaded with music and sound effects intended for use during Halloween.

So, with my mom staying home on disability on account of a broken ankle keeping me firmly stranded at the house unless my services are otherwise needed for grocery shopping on account of the fact that my brother won't do it I've been taking advantage of the Funimation Anime online viewing site to get caught up on watching Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and the subtitled version of Digimon Adventure 02. Not surprisingly I've been getting more enjoyment out of the latter as it is a series I already loved when I watched the dub on Fox Kids back in high school and am coming to appreciate even more now that I'm getting a more accurate representation of the original story. Digimon has, in my experience, always had more depth than might be expected of a show that was allegedly intended for a younger audience which might have contributed to the fact that back when I first became interested in the fandom it was largely dominated by an age range between 14-17. A lot of the younger kids I talked to at the time either didn't know what Digimon was or couldn't distinguish it from Pokemon.

Out of the five existing seasons of Digimon, I think the reason that Digimon Adventure 02 has remained my favorite is because it was the definitive season in establishing that it was possible for anyone to obtain a partner digimon. On top of that there's the great unsolved mystery surrounding the enigmatic World of Darkness. Even though it is somewhat better explained in the original version of the series the eerie beach devoid of any color and home to creatures that at the very least resemble Eldritch Abominations has always been a strong source of curiosity for me when dealing with the Digimon fandom. Along with the mythology surrounding the Four Holy Beasts, the Seven Demon Lords and the Thirteen Royal Knights that has probably one of the reasons I have remained interest in the series and other related media.

That, and Lighdramon is still my absolute favorite digital monster.

So, this month has been pretty hectic. I went to California to visit some of my friends during Anime Expo that I hadn't seen for about two years since I moved out here to live with my mom. I made a point of hitting my old stomping grounds and was pleased to note that despite my somewhat lacking sense of direction I apparently still remember how to navigate around the valley area fairly efficiently. For the most part places were pretty much the same, but then there were some things that had changed like an old Anime Store that was no longer there and a new Anime Store where I least expected to find one. Since I don't get out much living here without a license and my mom's license still currently suspended leaving my brother as the only licensed driver in the house I did a good amount of shopping while I had the chance. Of course most of the money I spent outside of Anime Expo's merchandise hall was on "exotic" food that I can't normally come across where I've been living these last couple of years. This includes things like Onigiri and Takoyaki as well as other snack items that could be found in the various Asian Markets that have taken root in various parts of California. And yes, it was worth every penny because all of the food I picked out was delicious. At least I thought so. Eventually Cat began to express her disdain over the distinct lack of "normal" food in our diet. Apparently assorted pastries stuff with sweet red bean paste don't constitute "normal" food, but I still enjoyed them immensely. At least we were able to appease Cat by getting her some nachos.

Overall I had a good convention experience at Anime Expo this year although the real purpose for my visit was to hangout and catch up with my friends. As such we scheduled an obligatory laser tag outing at Ultra Zone that seemed almost hit or miss until the lazy panda finally made some reservations online that were only slightly dented by a sudden onslaught of traffic resulting from the sudden closure of a certain freeway. Despite concerns about whether or not our attempts to organize such a gathering would be successful it was a night well spent once we got there. Being as that gathering ended up happening on the last night I was in California I think it was quite a good send off actually. Because of my little shopping spree at Anime Expo I ended up with quite a bit more merchandise than I could have effectively fit into my luggage so I ended up shipping a good amount of it to myself instead. Considering one of the items in question was a small wooden katana that needed to be shipped as it couldn't be passed through airport security the trip to the post office really wasn't that far out of the way anyway.

So yeah, I was only in California for slightly under two weeks and then Cat came out here to visit me for another two weeks after that and finally went home yesterday so she's probably more exhausted from all the excitement than I am. Naturally we've already begun to conspire for the next time I decide to go out and visit her as one month clearly wasn't enough time together.