What is Aperture?

I talk about Aperture a lot, and I've managed to go almost three years without ever really explaining what it is. (Aperture turns three this year. Holy crap.) Today would be Nate's 19th birthday, so I figured it would be a good day to post something like this.

(If you landed on this page because of a photography-related Google search, sorry. This isn't what you're looking for.)

Short version: Aperture is a story about four kids with magical abilities that get themselves into trouble.

Of course, that doesn't really cover much, so I'm gonna talk a little bit more in depth underneath the cut.

Writing Goals: March / April

I feel like I'm talking about my writing a lot. I think that's a good thing. I hope.

I picked the background thinking, "Oh, it's spring soon." Which means even more thunderstorms like we had yesterday. Thunderstorms in February are surreal. 

I've been doing really well with my writing goals so far this year, and I really want to keep up the momentum.

My January goal was to write at least 500 words every day. In February I added onto it by making at least 100 of those words be towards Casanova. It was a really good move! I'm starting to learn that challenges like NaNo (or even little self-motivated ones like this) are really good at forcing myself to be accountable.

In March, though, I'm considering dropping the Casanova word count goal in order to gear up to do the story for Camp NaNo in April. I'm afraid I might burn myself out by the time Camp NaNo comes by, and I really want to make it a success this year.

I'm hoping that dropping the pressure to write for Casanova every day will force me to do some behind-the-scenes building. I've collected a lot of sticky notes in my school notebooks of things I know I need to work on, but I've never gotten around to actually doing anything. I've had a list of things to research since NaNo that I've never gotten around to.

Of course, there's no way for me to quantitatively track my backstage work, so this plan might not go as well as I'm hoping. And I haven't thought of a plan B yet.

I'm planning to do another 25,000 word goal for this Camp NaNo, which is definitely going to be a challenge based on this month's progress. It's not going to be as insane as NaNo, which will be good, but it's going to require even more motivation. Which is good! I want to make more progress with Casanova than I'm making now.

I'm also going to use the same game plan I used during NaNo -- I'm going to let myself write for more than just Casanova during April, but the other stories don't get to count towards my Camp NaNo progress. Those are extra. This worked really well for me in November and I'm hoping it'll keep me going if I hit roadblocks. (Which is very likely.)

Hopefully by the end of April I'll have something resembling a readable first draft of Casanova! (Well, second draft, I guess.) Right now I'm working towards having a draft that can be read beginning to end, however rough it is. I might need to make a really comprehensive outline between now and the end of March to get there. I don't know.

I'm hoping to make another post about my May / June writing goals as Camp NaNo ends, which I may tack on to a April reflection post. We'll see. Anyway, these next two months should be an adventure. If anyone else is planning on doing Camp NaNo, let me know! I'd love some competition company ♥

8 Song Challenge: Aperture

I'm finally trying out a new post series I came up with!

My writing playlists tend to get kind of long, so I thought it would be a fun challenge to try and limit myself to eight songs and still encompass the feeling of the whole playlist.

I don't have many posts about Aperture so far, but I do have an old post about character playlists and a more recent post about the quartet. Aperture is my "sandbox" story that I worked on for the majority of high school and it's definitely the story I work on the most.

You can click the embedded video below to play all the songs in the playlist, or you can head to the playlist's page on YouTube, or you can continue below the cut to see a little bit more about the songs I picked!

Library Books >>>

I haven't been to the library since, like, October, and it's finally starting to catch up with me big time. I said I kicked my reading slump, but honestly I still have been reading much less than I'd like to.

I'm ready to finally break my library ban, but I don't know when I'll get the chance to go to the library, so I figured I'd at least talk a little bit about why this feeling suddenly hit me in the face earlier this afternoon.

Katsucon 2016

I'm back from my 6th Katsucon!! I almost didn't go this year, but I'm really glad I did!

(This post feels like it makes no sense to me. I think I'm sleep deprived. Please forgive me. Hopefully I'll come back to this tomorrow and fix it up.) 

I almost backed out of going this year because none of my con-going friends from school were going. I went to AUSA despite that, but I knew then that I would have Twitter / con friends that I could meet up with. Luckily I was able to borrow one of my friends for the weekend, so I wasn't alone!

This was the first time I put no effort into getting ready for Katsu. It's a little pitiful. This is probably the most chill Katsu I've had, but I still had a lot of fun! I only took ten pictures this year ;; The first couple years I went I took well over a hundred pictures, so this is really strange for me. 

I decided to skip Friday since it lowered the cost for me by $20. My parents told me not to buy my badge ahead of time in case we got a huge snowstorm like last year. We actually did get some snow Friday night into Saturday morning, but luckily nothing like last year. Unfortunately Saturday was freezing cold. 

This year was also unique in the fact this was the first time in six years of con-going that I experienced my first "disaster" of sorts. Jessica and I were out at lunch when we heard about the Gaylord being evacuated, so we luckily missed a lot of the chaos. 

This was the registration line when we got there around 9am Saturday morning. This was insane. The lines are usually long, and last year I was amazed that we got our badges in under an hour. This year we got them in under 20 minutes. Major props to the staff tbh

Jessica and I cosplayed Camp Half-Blood kids, and we managed to find a Camp Jupiter cosplayer, which was :OO

All the other cosplayers I got pictures of were from Miraculous Ladybug! I was so happy to see so many ♥ ML has become my life recently lol

I'm pretty sure this Cat Noir is @thealchemicfox

I saw very few Adrien cosplayers, which I was kind of sad about, since he's probably my favorite character. I'm upset this picture turned out kind of blurry since these two were really cute

I really love the designs of these cosplays! The Ladybug cosplayer complimented my Sailor Moon hoodie after I got their picture, which was really ♥o♥

I owe a lot to Jessica for being willing to come to Katsu with me this year ♥ She was very patient with me while I fangirled about ML and even let me get her into the fandom, which means a lot to me lol She's willing to come to other conventions in the future so I'm hoping it'll work out for us!

I also owe a lot to my parents for spending another Valentine's weekend at the con so I could attend ♥ I really appreciate that they're supportive of my hobby, and that they enjoy the convention enough to continue to come back. (Hopefully they'll start cosplaying next year P: )

This haul is tiny compared to previous years lol I'm getting better about not buying everything I see, since I don't have enough room on my walls to hang all of my posters up anymore :c This year's AA also felt really tiny. Dealer's felt huge this year, and surprisingly I didn't buy anything out of it. 

(I just realized I left out the things I bought on Sunday since I left them in my backpack OTL) 

I'm going to update this post once I can find links to the cosplayers and the artists I bought from! Hopefully it won't take me more than a few days.

I didn't spend as much time at the convention this year from being worn-out from school and not wanting to bore Jessica. I didn't go to any panels or photoshoots, which I'm a little sad about, but I didn't look into any beforehand to know which ones were at the con this year. I also didn't get a schedule of the panels in the booklet :c I don't know if they didn't give any out or if I managed to get a bag without one.

I got to see almost all of my con friends! It was all by chance, too ♥ It means a lot to me that I've made friends through cons and through Twitter that I can look forward to meeting, since that wasn't something I expected to happen when I started going to Katsu back in 8th grade.

My next anime event will be the DC Cherry Blossom Festival! I'm looking forward to it c: After that will be Otakon during my birthday weekend! :D