erika_nightingale

I'm back after months away. Life has been pretty hectic so there will be lots of posts coming up shortly. These last couple of months were nuts.

This is a long running shoujo manga that is a historical romance. From what I can tell it's still ongoing, but it's difficult to say. Since the translators are slow on this one it will take time for me to actually get through this one. That's why I"m doing it in sections. Also I always ramble on and on when I discuss manga/anime so it's easier for me to split it up. Currently, I believe there are 98 chapters and only 64 chapters last I checked were translated. The rest I can find summaries on, but I'm not going to do that because it will kill any enjoyment of the series for me.




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Note: no images because all my images were broken and I don't know why and I don't feel like trying to fix it.

So funny story. I haven't logged into DW in awhile. Probably most people who follow me know this.
So I went to log in after not logging in for months. I managed to log into my old account which I thought didn't exist anymore. Anyway, I was utterly convinced I was in this account and I joined inkingitout and posted a comment under my old username.

Totally didn't realize I was in my old account until I went to make a post and couldn't change my icon because I only had one icon. Then I saw that I only had 15 available slots for icons and I was like wait did my paid account expire? What's going on? Where's my reading list? Where are my post? Did all my stuff get deleted? Then it dawned on me. I was in the wrong account.

So now I have to talk to the inkingitout people and get all fixed up. I'm both hitting my head against a wall and laughing at myself. I think it's kinda funny and kinda unbelievable. I don't even know! I think I might just get rid of the old account since I never used it.

I can't believe I even knew the password for that thing! Like how??

So I've been thinking that I need to do more exercise. I've been terrible about it for the last three months. I"m thinking of doing this challenge: http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/Walk/walk.html

It's sounds fun to me. I'm thinking I'm going to start with The Hobbit and then go into The Lord of the Rings challenges. A friend of mine is also wanting to do it so that's another reason to do it. I may end up recording my progress here.

I mowed the grass today so I'll probably start tomorrow.

So what I've decided to do get my mojo back is to take prompts daily and write a scene from that prompt. The scenes will probably be messy as I'm not really editing them or anything as the point is for me to just write without thinking too hard. This particular prompt is a bit longer than I anticipated so I split into two sessions. I'm trying to write about 500 words a day for the next month. You can read it or not. Maybe one day I'll come back and do the story properly.

So far I have completed two days worth of writing coming in at 1344 words.

Prompt: Birthright

Your whole life you have been educated as a royal of the court. Now you have discovered your lineage isn’t what everyone thought. Will you try to preserve your station by removing any evidence. or embrace your new life as a wandering commoner?

Gotten from: needleinthehay.net/writing-prompts-for-fantasy-stories/

            

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I'm home after my trip and my internet is super wonky OMG. I'm lucky if anything loads. Although it's better today than yesterday. I have about 7 fics I need to publish on tumblr as they were meant to be out by December 24.

With the internet down last night I finally tried Final Fantasy 15. I'm not sure how much I really like it. The game play is fun but the way they're doing the story feels so disjointed. I ended up quitting and playing Skyrim for a bit but who knows sometimes it takes me awhile to get really into a game. I'm actually enjoying playing Final Fantasy I more on my Ipad.

This is a rare personal post that is going to remain public because I just realized that I just friended a bunch of people and now I'm going to be disappearing for four days. I'm going on a mini vacation to San Diego which I'm excited about because 1) warm weather, 2) I get to see some family I haven't seen in about six years and 3) I've never been to San Diego.

This past couple weeks have been tough. My Grandma passed away December 29 and her funeral was this Tuesday. It happened very fast. The Tuesday before she died the doctors said she would be going home that Friday. Wednesday afternoon she suddenly took a turn for the worst. We were driving home from visiting my in-laws and were six hours away when we got a call saying to hurry home that it looked bad. By the time we got there they had induced sleep to perform a CT scan. That night she progressed worse and my Dad and his siblings had to make the choice to pull the plug on her life support or not. We ended up choosing to pull the plug because everything in her body was shutting down.

So I didn't get to see her awake but I did speak with her on Tuesday. I think maybe I should have known it was worse than I thought it was because for the first time she admitted to me that she was in pain. We only spoke for a few minutes and it was a terse conversation but she was in a lot of pain.

A lot of things in my life are going to change. I did a lot of things with her. We went to the theater, to concerts, out to eat, shopping, and all sorts of things. I visited her often, although not as often as I would like. It's a weird feeling because I know we did a lot together and yet I still think I could have done more with her. I don't really feel guilty so much as just sad we didn't get to spend as much time as we usually do together. She was fun to talk to. I'll miss her greatly. I'm at a much better place these last couple of days since the funeral.

It didn't help that during the funeral I was sick and have only now just recovered from the cold I had. I'm kind of ready for this trip to San Diego but there is also a part of me that just wants to stay home. I have school in two weeks and I feel so unrested for it.

So I recently found out about the servers changing to Russia from California. I'm moving to Dreamwidth. It's probably only a matter of time before I get removed since I belong to a bunch of pro LGBT communities and Russian laws surrounding LGBT issues aren't good at all. While I think most of the deleted blogs are rumors with no substance I'm not sure how long that will last as I remember years past where they did delete many blogs.

I'm transferring everything to dreamwidth as I write this, once that is done I'll crosspost as long as I feel comfortable doing so. If they start deleting people again I'm out. If you want to friend me on dreamwidth I'm lily_everhart there.

I meant to update this awhile ago but I went through a dry spell reading and right now I'm going through 2-3 books a week all in the same week. I'm afraid this list isn't very interesting. They are almost all from the same series because that's what I'm into right now. I'm currently 2 books ahead of my reading goal but since I'll be reading the first trilogy of the Kushiel's Legacy series as well as the 3rd Wheel of Time Book, I'll slow down. Then I'll read manga to fluff up my list ;)

One Piece Manga Vol. 2- We get a proper introduction of Nami and our villain Buggy the Clown. This is probably my least favorite island adventure in the series. I find the villains tedious, Buggy doesn't appeal to me until much later. We do get some nice interactions between Luffy, Nami, and Zoro though and its fun to revisit the initial interactions between the first 3 members of the Straw Hats. The fights were fun although I'm not as fond of them now since I'm used to what the characters can do now. It's nice to see that the characters have grown so much.

Heir of Darkness by Anne Bishop- The second book in the trilogy. This books picks up where the last one left and details how Jaenelle heals and forms her court. Lucivar is very important in this one and it focuses a lot on Jaenelle and Lucivar's relationship and how it develops. There's a bit more lightheartedness in this book while Jaenelle is healing but the darker aspects of the series are still present. Daemon, Jaenelle's love interest has his mind shattered so he is MIA most of the story because of that. The writing is overall much better. The caste system that Anne Bishop made as well as how magic works in this book are explained much better. It feels more cohesive than the previous book. I also think Anne' Bishop's dialogue improves a lot in this book. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot.

Queen of Darkness by Anne Bishop- The third book in the trilogy. This is actually the best book of the three, no joke. It's actually really two stories wrapped into one. While the other books had that too I would say that Part 1 and Part 2 here do feel like separate stories within the same story. The first one deals with Daemon, whose regained sanity, trying to join Jaenelle's court and him and Surreal navigating the new family (Jaenelle's court) and adjusting to their new lives. The second half is all about how Jaenelle gets rid of the villains of the series. It can be quite brutal at times but it has a very good ending that leaves room for more but is satisfying on its own. Anne Bishop's writing here is about the same as the second book which is fine because it's pretty good. It was hard to put down. I read part 1 in one sitting and part 2 in another. While Anne Bishop's writing isn't the most glamorous or most beautiful it can suck you in with the wonderful characters.

The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop- This fourth book is actually a prequel to the Black Jewels Trilogy. The cast is completely different and only Daemon makes a couple brief appearances. The story is told from Jared POV as well as the villains POV. I highly enjoyed this book. It's actually one of my favorites. The plot is super tight in this book and Jared is different enough from the main male characters of the trilogy to feel like a completely different person. His romance with Lia is bumbling and kind of sweet. This book also has best girl Thera who is amazing. I didn't notice much difference in the writing in this book either but I read the entire thing in one sitting so perhaps too fast to really notice the prose.

Dreams Made Flesh by Anne Bishop- The fifth book in the series this one is a collection of short stories. The first one is I think an experimental short story by Anne. It's incredibly short and is from the viewpoint of a spider as she slowly becomes more sentient and gains knowledge to weave the Tangled webs from a dead dragon. It's interesting but I think too short to be memorable. The second story deals with how Lucivar met his wife Marian. It's super cute and Marian is adorable and fun to read about since she isn't super powerful. It's probably the best of the bunch and is super long, almost novella length. The third story deals with Saetan and how he became so feared. It's good but very dark. I'll not say much more than that. The final story is Daemon and Jaenelle figuring out their relationship and getting married, there is a subplot where a woman tries break them up which while fun reminds me too much of the Lucivar/Marian short story. Overall, the stories were a lot of fun. Many parts felt kind of like official fanfiction written by the author but I found that I didn't care all that much.

Tangled Webs by Anne Bishop: The sixth book is from Surreal's POV and has the silly plot. Basically Surreal and her friend Rainier (as well as a group of kids) get stuck in a haunted house that's trapped them in a game where they must find the exit without using craft(magic) otherwise they'll be stuck forever. The highlight of this book is actually before the action happens with the haunted house or spooky house as they call it in the books. There were actually a few scenes that made me laugh out loud. That being said it was probably my least favorite of the Black Jewels series so far. The spooky house part wasn't as interesting as it could be until Lucivar showed up. There are some things that happened that I think will have lasting effects of Surreal and Rainier so I know the story isn't completely pointless.

So yeah, my reading list this time is fairly boring. There are 9 books in the series and I'm on the 7th one right now, about 30% of the way through. I have Magi 2-8 to read and more One Piece manga to read as well. I plan to read Kushiel's Dart after I finish the Black Jewels Trilogy. I'm a third of the way through The Secret History of Wonder Woman which I'll make a separate post about when I finish as well as mention it in the next Goodreads Challenge Update.

So at this moment I've read 13 of 30 books.