New Year Writing Update!

So!  Between August 2019 and October 2019, I worked on a series of stories which involved Grandpa Anarchy and a bunch of magical girls, including four former sidekicks who were forming their own magical girl-themed supergroup.  I still have these stories listed in a folder titled Book 15 -- Just One Punch which is a title that has no real relation to the stories contained within.

My plan was to tell one complete story over the course of about thirty short stories.  I had plans for how I was going to wrap things up, but I ran into November and NaNoWriMo and didn't finish it.  This is typical for me -- I wrote a big ending story to my Magical March 2018 story arc (Book 10, Mahou Shoujo Blues) and I didn't like it and wanted to rewrite it, and I still have never done that.

In the meantime for NaNoWriMo I worked on a fan fiction story called Nerima All-Stars.  My plan was to finish this story and publish it on the web, but by the end I realized I was about 50,000 words shy of a good ending -- there are a series of battles left to write, a big finish.  And so I planned to continue working on that for December, then wrote nothing more.

I also planned to write a Christmas ghost story in December.  I poked at two partial stories, The Library of Dreams and Two-Fisted Santa, and didn't finish either one.

For my New Year's Resolutions I want to write a story a week in 2020, and publish something to my story blog once a week.  I haven't published anything there since early November I think.  But!  I started off the new year by completing a story, Die Glocke.  I have a lot of old story ideas that are partially written and this was one of them.  I'm not sure the end result is a good story but hey, it's something!

Today I've been looking at other partial stories and story ideas I can work in in January:

No Politics:  This is a satirical story from The Onion I think, about how some comic readers don't want politics or political statements in their comics, which are almost entirely based on political ideas (avatars who stand in for capitalism, communism, or fascism; stories about mutants who are persecuted for being born different; stories about people transformed into government agents by secret authoritarian government agencies).  I didn't specifically have a story plot here, just copied the Onion story to a file because the ideas expressed in it would make good fodder for a Grandpa Anarchy story.

To Punch A Hitler:  This one is partially written.   The idea is that on March 8 Grandpa Anarchy is depressed because this is Victory Day in Europe, and Grandpa never managed to punch Hitler in the face.  He's punched a myriad of Hitler clones, alternate-universe Hitlers, robotic Hitlers, etc., but not the actual Hitler himself.  I haven't figured out the ending of this story (I don't think I want to write them going back in history just to punch Hitler) but I really like the setup so I want to try and finish it.

Amguh:  The idea here is that Grandpa has a sidekick whose name is OMG Girl, but she pronounces it Amghuh Girl.  Really, that's all there is to the idea at the moment.

Arachnope:  I have a lot of stuff written on this file.  There's a villain named King Spider who is deathly afraid of spiders himself, and thinks they are the most terrifying thing in the world, but tends to build traps filled with Daddy Longlegs/Harvestmen because to him they're quite terrifying, and he can't contemplate using something that might actually be dangerous to him.  Again, I like the ideas but not sure where the story goes or how it ends.

Punch 'Em All:  I should write this because I think I have a complete plot for it.  Grandpa Anarchy is approached by a group of people who are creating a Pokemon Go-like game involving hunting down villains and punching them.  Grandpa at first makes fun of it, then becomes addicted to it, but the people who made the game are using it to track Grandpa and hack into his computer systems.

Mister Anarchy 2020:  This is a new idea.  I saw a post on Twitter about an old Superman story called Superman 2020.  In it, Superman's grandson becomes Superman III, and fights Nazis in a future world that looks a lot like the time it was written (I think the 60's or 70's) but in which they insert "future slang" to try and make it more futuristic.  I want to write something similar for Grandpa Anarchy.

This story involves a lot of research.  I've written about Grandpa Anarchy in pulp fiction, comics, television and movies before, but I had that information buried in a catch-all Anarchy Lore file, and I've written quite a few things since that aren't included in the file.  I decided to set up a separate file just for Grandpa Anarchy In Fiction, and I'll need to track down all of the other things I've added regarding new movies and some of the details about pulp fiction stories that were written -- Miss X is the title of one, and there are several more involving Kid Continuity and the Continuity Crusaders, who have traveled back in time to collect some exceeding rare pulp stories, and also collected a whole slew of alien-made comic books from a race of beings called the Painters.

I swear I have a file somewhere that contains some of that info but I wasn't able to find it this morning.

Now that I think about it, one of my New Year's goals should be to read at least one Grandpa Anarchy story a day and update my lore files with everything important contained therein.  I need a list of all of Grandpa's sidekicks, for example, a list of all stories and whether they are completed or not, and I desperately need to update my list of people in the Grandpa Anarchy universe.

Wilfred:  While researching the story above, I noticed that I have a note that Grandpa Anarchy had a butler until 1959.  Wilfred died that year, as well as Grandpa's partner Guy Shadow and soon after the enemy which killed Guy Shadow, Doctor Zero Hour II.  There's a story in there somewhere, and it might possibly involve a robotic version of the butler Wilfred or I don't know, something equally weird.

I also want to complete both of the Christmas stories I was working on, The Library of Dreams and Two-Fisted Santa.  I have other Christmas ghost story ideas I could work on, such as the Re-gifted Heart.  I haven't finished a Christmas ghost story in two years soI don't want to wait until next December to work on these again.

New Year's Goals for 2020:

1.  Exercise every day, 30 minutes  or more of walking preferred.
2.  Write one new story a week (or the equivalent -- 1,500+ words).
3.  Post one story to my Tales of Grandpa Anarchy blog each week.
4.  Read at least one Grandpa Anarchy story a day and document people and things of interest.

The Secrets of Gilgamesh

I watched a video lecture about the Epic of Gilgamesh over the weekend, as well as a handful of different other videos over the last few weeks about ancient cultures, certain passages of the Bible, how to build an ark according to the Sumerian story, etc., and I've got all of this stuff in my head, along with the lyrics to The Mesopotamians by They Might Be Giants, which takes four of the more famous names from ancient Mesopotamian cultures -- Sargon, Hammurabi, Asherbanipal, and Gilgamesh -- and places them in some kind of "Hey, Hey, We're the Monkees" song about being in a band.

Who are these people?  Completely off the top of my head, Sargon was one of the earliest known Sumerian kings.  Gilgamesh (or Bilgamesh in Sumerian) was also an ancient Sumerian king, who somehow wound up being a hero figure in a lot of mythological poems, culminating in a poet from a different future society weaving many of these stories together into an epic poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which influence later epics such as the Illiad and the Odyssey.  Hammurabi is a famous king from... Akkad or Babylon, I forget, who created a set of laws that later scholars decided were the first such laws ever set down, although subsequently we've realized he was borrowing from kings who came before him.  And Asherbanipal... all I know is he had a library where the clay tablets with the Epic of Gilgamesh were found.  He was an Akkadian or Babylonian king.

I find all of this stuff fascinating.  I find ancient history fascinating.  It's pretty amazing to think that ancient Rome and the time of Christ was 2,000 years ago, an almost unimaginable span of time, and yet recorded history goes back nearly 4,000 years beyond that.  We think our country has existed a long time, but some of these ancient empires lasted hundreds of years, over a thousand years.  We think Shakespeare lived a long time ago and his English is difficult to understand, but stories about Gilgamesh survived in the Middle East for well over a thousand years, through several successive empires.

What fascinates me even more is what we don't know.  Stories were told before the advent of writing.  Stories were written down, then lost.  The stories which we have -- even as popular a story as that of Gilgamesh -- is still fragmentary, assembled from many sources.  We've never deciphered the ancient writing of the Minoan civilization, so we only know about them from excavation and from Mycenean/Greek writers.  The Phoenecians dominated trade in the Mediterranean for hundreds of years, but we know little of their own writing.  What scrolls existed at the library at Alexandria?  We'll never know.  There are hundreds of carbonized scrolls found at the Roman city of Herculaneum which were all but destroyed by mount Vesuvius, and yet we are still trying to figure out how to unroll them and read them.  What heroes existed in myths told for hundreds of years that no modern person knows anything about?

A lot of my fantasies from when I was young until now involve imagining ways such history could have been preserved.  I imagine I'm a part of some ancient alien race, some elf-like beings, shapeshifters or godlike creatures who have dwelt among humans since ancient times and recorded what society was like, what tribes moved where, how people lived, what their music and stories were.  They have some hidden fortress or perhaps a base on another world where all of this information is kept, and if you wish to know what life in a Mayan city was really like, or what tales people told each other 10,000 years ago, you could find out.

I also used to imagine that once you reach heaven, you could learn all of the secrets to the mysteries that you'd read about that were never solved -- like what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste, who was Jack the Ripper really, or what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke Island?  I guess I've always been really big on the idea that somehow we could learn all of the things we want to know, even though the truth is that we not only will never know most of these things, but in many cases the truth is likely much less interesting than the mystery that surrounds it.  Not to mention, there are many more mysteries and histories that are so forgotten that we don't even know to ponder over them.

On the flip side, we know so much more about some of this stuff today than we did even a hundred or two hundred years ago.  Two or three hundred years ago, experts imagined that written history began with the Greeks.  Slowly people learned of forgotten ancient cultures much older -- ancient Egypt, the Hittite Empire, ancient Assyria, Babylon, Sumeria, the Minoans, etc.  In 1853 the Epic of Gilgamesh was first discovered, but translations in English did not appear until much later.  So from one viewpoint I'm living in a pretty amazing time where we know much, much more about the ancient world than we did only a few generations ago.  I have the opportunity to read about things that people of past generations could only dream about.

I'm not sure there's a point to this post, other than all of these things have been bouncing around in my mind over the last few days.  ^_^

The Epic of Gilgamesh poem is framed by a description of the city he ruled.  It begins the poem, and at the end when Gilgamesh returns, having learned that his quest for immortality is in vain, it ends the poem, as if to say everyone dies, but look at the city!  Life goes on.

Climb Uruk's wall and walk back and forth!
Survey its foundations, examine the brickwork!
Were its bricks not fired in an oven?
Did the Seven Sages not lay its foundation?

A square mile is the city, a square mile the date-grove, a square mile is the clay-pit, half a square mile the temple of Ishtar:  three square miles and a half is Uruk's expanse.

See the tablet-box of cedar,
release its clasp of bronze!
Lift the lid of its secret,
pick up the tablet of lapiz lazuli and read out
the travails of Gilgamesh, all that he went through.

Fan vs. Pro Translations

I read a lot of fan translated manga.  While not legal, it's often the only version of a given manga available in English.

For example, although anime exists for Birdy the Mighty, nobody except fans have ever translated the long-running manga (which has more than one incarnation, even in Japan it moved from one publisher to another.  The current version is Tetsuwan Birdy Evolution.)  I could argue that the series gets bogged down in minor details and plot points and never seems to go anywhere... which might be a reason why it hasn't been translated.  But I still like reading it.

Another manga that's internet-popular but unlikely to be worth a professional translation is Only Sense Online.  It's a slice-of-life kind of story that deals with the minutiae of crafting in an online world -- so similarly to Birdy, it gets bogged down in details a lot.  The plot, what little there is, advances very slowly.  It's not earth-shattering stuff, but it's still entertaining to read.

There are a lot of smaller manga that I really like that would never make financial sense to translate:  Tadashi Ore wa Heroine Toshite, Hungry Marie, Cylcia = Code, and Magical Trans! just to name a few.  I don't expect to ever see a professional translation of these, but I've been able to read them because fans translated them.

When it comes to more popular series however, there's usually a professional translation, and you're supposed to support the company doing the translating and buy the volumes they publish.  After all, the only thing that guarantees new stuff will be translated and published is if they make money at what they do.  I feel like I'm increasingly in the minority when it comes to wanting physical books in my hands -- and I admit, my house is crammed full of books, and I don't need more (I'll have to move them all about this time next year), but even though I've more-or-less converted to digital when it comes to music, I resist buying digital books.

(Even when most of my friends who had Amazon lists requested them this year.)

For me, having a physical manga volume is one of the main reasons to buy the professionally-translated book in the first place.  If I bought a digital version then the only difference between that and the fan version is the quality of the translation.

Sometimes, however, that quality makes a big difference.  Fan translations can vary wildly.  In some cases the translator opts for a literal word-for-word translation, either because of principals (not all fans agree with a non-literal interpretation), or because their grasp of both languages is less than perfect.  But the results can be difficult to read.  The meaning of the words is there, but the text hardly flows well in English.  Dialog is stilted, concepts get repeated, the deeper meaning of what is being said is obscured.  It takes a talented translator to not only translate the meaning of the words but also to make sure it flows well in English and that the concepts being discussed are clear.

I've been comparing chapters of That time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.  The fan translation is by Shurim, who does everything, and eventually stopped translating this after someone complained, and then another translator picked it up.  The professional translation is by Stephen Paul for Kodansha Comics.  I'm not trying to attack Shurim here, just wanted to point out the difference that buying a professionally-translated manga can provide.  This is all from chapter 18, the start of book 4:

Fan Translation:

The existence that brings disaster to the world, Orc Lord
The skill that is in-born when the Orc Lord appears is a skill that effects all his subordinates:  Unique Skill [Starving Ones].

Pro Translation:

A beast descending upon the world, bringing disaster and chaos.  The Orc Lord.
His terrifying innate skill affects all those under his rule.  The Unique Skill, "Starved".

Fan:

Rumuru:  Suppress the Orc Lord?  That's... asking me to enter this battle?  [What is this big sister talking about]
Dryad:  That's of course, Rimuru Tempest-Sama
Benimaru:  For you to appear out of no where and just start talking, Dryad that's called Layato correct, Why come to this village, There's races that are stronger than the goblins correct
Dryad:  You're right.  If the ogre village did not fall... I might have went to the ogre's village instead.  Mah, even so I couldn't ignore the existence of this master.

Pro:

Rimuru:  Vanquish the Orc Lord?  Umm... me?  [What is this lady saying?]
Dryad:  That is correct, Lord Rimuru Tempest.
Benimaru:  That's quite a demand, coming from someone who just waltzed in out of nowhere, "Treyni the Dryad" or so you call yourself.  Why have you come here?  There must be other races that would be better suited than the goblins.
Dryad:  It is a good question.  If your ogre village were still standing now, I might have come to you for help instead.  But even if that were the case, I do not think I could ignore the presence of the one who now stands before me.

Fan:

Rimuru:  But whether the Orc  Lord has been born is still a question...
Dryad:  We dryads are able to gain many information as long as it's inside the Jura Forest.  The Orc Lord?  His already born.
Rimuru:  Layato Please allow me to reply after a few days.

Pro:

Rimuru:  We had only hypothesized that the Orc Lord was roaming about.
Dryad:  Dryads are always aware of what occurs within the forest.  And there is most certainly an Orc Lord here.
Rimuru:  I must ask you to wait a bit for my final answer, Treyni...

Fan:

Shuna:  Souei you've went back to our village right?
Souei:  Yes.
Shuna:  From your expression... It musts be not found?
Souei:  Yes... neither the orc's nor our own kind.  There was nothing.
Rimuru:  Nothing?  What are you guys talking about?
Souei:  Corpse.
Benimaru:  No wonder... I was wondering how they were able to feed 200,000 orcs.
Hakuro:  As they do not have any idea in war.
Dryad:  Unique Skill [Starved Ones].  A skill that the Orc Lord gains the moment it's born.  It allows the orcs to eat anything and everything.  This point is similar to your skill [Predator].  Though it's similar to [Predator] but it's success rate is not constant, but if there's many using the skill for consumption at the same time the rate rises.

Pro:

Shuna:  Did you inspect the ruins of our village, Souei?
Souei:  I did.
Shuna:  And were they empty after all?
Souei:  They were.  I did not find a single one -- of ours or theirs.
Rimuru:  Pardon me, not a single what?
Souei:  Dead body.
Benimaru:  Ah, I see... I was wondering how they were getting enough food to support an army of 200,000.
Hakuro:  Indeed... they have no concept of supply-line logistics.
Dryad:  The Unique Skill:  Starved.  It is a skill that every Orc Lord is born with.  It allows him to absorb the properties of any monster he eats.  In that aspect, it is similar to your "Predator" skill.  Unlike "Predator", there is no guarantee of success in a single attempt, but as his ravenous hunger compels him to devour more and more, the odds will naturally increase.

As you can easily see, the professional translation is likely not quite as literal but feels like natural English, and communicates things clearly.  I think the decision that stands out the most to me is having Hakuro say "they have no concept of supply-line logistics".  That does not sound like a phrase that anyone in a medieval setting would use... but it communicates what he is trying to say much better than "they do not have any idea in war".  Maybe there's a third way to phrase that which doesn't sound as anachronistic, although I have to admit that I probably only focused on it because I was reading the text carefully to note how each translator phrased things.  If I had been reading normally it might not have jumped out at me.


The end result is that I can read the fan translation and understand most of the story, but I enjoy reading the professional translation more.  It feels more alive, the dialog feels more natural and real.  Whether that's worth the cost of a digital version of the comic, I'm not sure... for me, having a physical manga in my hands is still what makes it worth the price to purchase.



^_^

NaNoWriMo Wrapup 2019

I wrote 62,234 words for NaNoWriMo.  I didn't write anything after Thanksgiving.

What I accomplished:  For the second time I attempted to finish a "short" fanfiction story called Nerima All-Stars and I wrote more than 50,000 words and am still nowhere near finished.

My original idea was that several gods and one half-god and one demon decide to play a game.  They  transform the Nerima of Ranma 1/2 into a world where heros and villains exist, then they transform some of the main characters into heroes and villains.  I actually had this idea that I might do up to three separate arcs, each with a different villain... but of course the story spun way out of control and the first villain arc alone is still unfinished.

I wrote my original opening scenes for this story in 1999 or 2000, then set them aside for years.  Finally in 2016 I set out to complete the story during NaNoWriMo.  I wandered off on a tangent where Ranma winds up in the world of Lina Inverse (Slayers) in order to learn how to become a sorcerer, and that was a massive chapter that covered one single side plot before the big battle.

This time around I managed to finish up all of the scenes that lead up to the Ranma-in-Slayersville chapter, and then I launched into an Akane-in-heaven chapter.  I'm not sure how successful this was.   It felt like it was long and somewhat pointless, and I added some drama and weirdness that made it even longer, and... I don't know, the whole middle of my story involves two long side stories where characters go to other dimensions for long stretches of time.  By the end, everyone was back together again but I have yet to write the final chapter which figures to be a massive one since it's the final battle with the big bad villain.

I think my plan is to work on this for December.  I was working on some Grandpa Anarchy stories in September and October, and trying to get back to publishing stories on my Grandpa Anarchy blog site, and then in November I completely forgot about doing that.  December I usually try to write a Christmas ghost story for our December writer's night, but almost every year this means dropping whatever I was working on for NaNoWriMo and jumping on something completely different, and I really dislike doing that.  I want to finish this fanfiction story so that I can publish it, so screw the Christmas story, I won't do one this year.

That said, it's December 2nd and I've written virtually nothing in the last five days, just jotted down some half-scenes today.  It'll take at least another 50,000 words to finish this thing, so I need to get working on it.

Crimson is a Spell Word: Creating Spells for My Story

Update:  It's November 13th and I've written almost 30,000 words on my chosen project, Nerima All-Stars.  I'm hoping to finish up this story (at least, bring it to a reasonable ending point) and then publish it after November 30th.  My document is over 87,000 words at this point, and that includes some of my research into spell casting text which I write about here, but since I've spent several hours coming up with the right words for my spells, I think the research should count, even if some of it was copying down spells and phrases from other sources.  >.>



So here I am once again, trying to craft a realistic (or at least magik-sounding) spell for the story I'm currently working on.

In my story I have two magical girls, Ukyo Kuonji, and another girl who has been transformed into Ukyo's twin by accident.  Ukyo was not happy about becoming a magical girl, and changed the rules so that she became an okonomiyaki chef-themed magical girl.  Thus, her spells really ought to relate to her status as an okonomiyaki chef, I figured.

Magical girls tend to make bold declarations about love and good vs evil.  They call their attacks.  These aren't spells per se, but they kind of sound like spells at times.  Especially because I want my magical girls to be more defensive and protective in nature, rather than offensive, I figure their abilities ought to sound like spells being cast.

Crafting a good-sounding spell is more art than science, if you ask me.  It just needs to feel right,to feel mystical in some way.  It's not quite a poem, not quite a recipe, not quite a contract, not necessarily archaic speech, but if it includes some of those qualities that may help.  Use of unusual words may help:  anything that does not resemble normal speech or ways of speaking may help.

My first task for them was to dispel an enchantment, where several of their friends had been hypnotized or mind-controlled.  My initial effort was as so:

Magical Okonomiyaki Chef Uchan, 

Magical Okonomiyaki Chef Yoiko, 

Dispel Enchantment:  Hallowed Okonomiyaki Sauce Love Swirl!  Realm of Savory Pancake!

Which... was adequate, so far as that goes.

Next I wanted them to put up some kind of bubble shields to protect their allies.  Following the same pattern, I came up with:

Magical Okonomiyaki Chef Uchan, 

Magical Okonomiyaki Chef Yoiko, 

Protection Spell:  Okonomiyaki Batter, Air Bubbles of Shielding!

However by the time I reached a third spell, I'd decided that these simple efforts were not good enough.  I had to come up with something better.

First, I looked up okonomiyaki and the usual ingredients.  Given that the name basically means "fried as you like it" it's probably no surprise that a list of ingredients for okonomiyaki is a bit like asking for a list of ingredients for a pizza.  but the Kansai or Osaka style is the most popular and there are some ingredients that are common to most versions, including the batter, shredded cabbage, green onions or shallots, the sauce, garnishes like picked ginger, bonito  flakes, and aonori (seaweed).  You can add a lot of other things but most of these are common okonomiyaki ingredients.

Next I wanted to describe these ingredients in a creative manner that would sound good in a spell.  Initially I wrote:

Okonomiyaki sauce, dark golden brown like maple syrup 

mayonnaise, white like the clouds on a summer's day, sheets drying on a clothesline 

batter as thick as syrup, light brown fluffy filled with air 

bonito flakes, yellow-orange, curling in the heat 

diced shallots green and white fresh and crisp 

shredded cabbage, bedrock of the okonomiyaki

None of this was meant to be a final version of anything, I was just tossing ideas out, trying to find something that worked.

I gave up and headed to bed, but a particular phrase got stuck in my head:  crimson like the blood that flows....  This is part of what I remember from Lina Inverse's Dragon Slave spell, and one that I particularly liked I guess because it's been stuck in my head for years.  The full spell reads:

Darkness from twilight, crimson from blood that flows; buried in the flow of time; in Thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness! Those who oppose us shall be destroyed by the power you and I possess! DRAGON SLAVE!!

Which I only just looked up.  I like this spell; it sounds like a real spell.  And, in fact, Lina Inverse appears in my story and may even get the chance to cast Dragon Slave at some point, who knows?  If that happens I'll certainly use the spell the way it appears in the source material.

What I think captured my attention thought was the word crimson.  It's just another word for red, a more specific shade of red I suppose, but it sounds much more magical than just saying red.  It is a good spell word.  With that in mind, I came up with the following list of ingredients for okonomiyaki, described by color using more interesting word choices than red, yellow, green, orange:

crimson as the blood which beats in the heart of the chef,
azure like the sky beneath which the chef cooks,
emerald like the crisp diced shallot which spices the okonomiyaki
golden saffron like the batter which binds the food together
burnished caramel like the sauce which glazes the pancake surface
amber are the bonita flakes which curl and sizzle in the heat
alabaster creme is the color of the mayonnaise which garnishes the top
chartreuse is the color of the shredded cabbage, bedrock of the okonomiyaki
ruby are the buta-dama, the pork belly strips

gather now to me, spirits of love and the flavors of the grill, and grant to me my desire:

I still haven't crafted my spells, but I'm getting closer to what I actually want.

Another step is to take a good look at the spells in Ah!  My Goddess.  I just finished reading books 22 through 48, which is where the series ends (I've been reading both AMG and Ranma 1/2 manga since those are what my story is based on), and there are several examples of the goddesses (and demons) casting spells.  In the AMG universe spells are usually sung, and the words are more lyrical than normal speech, but not quite like poems or songs that rhyme or have rhythm.  Still, they feel like real spells and I like how they're handled, so I wanted to study them a bit more before crafting.

In book 39 Velspar, Mara and Hild cast a demonic spell to open the gate to hell:

Such is the land where all wishes are granted
Such is the land where in chaos light and dark entwine
Such is the land so distant and so near

In book 40, Urd attempts an attack spell:

Rumbling in the heavens,  flashing between the clouds, Ripping heaven and earth asunder, strike divine thunder bolts!

In book 48 we get the final chapter, a wedding ceremony between Belldandy and Keichi.  This is conducted by four goddesses:  Urd, Skuld, Lind, and Peorth, and it has some of the same hallmarks as the phrases of their spellcasting:

Here we celebrate,
From the East arrives Blue Hope,
From the North arrives Black Reason,
From the South arrives Red Passion,
From the West arrives White Silence
In the Center gathers Golden Love
The light showers, the breeze blows
In green flickers, then many colors, the road reaches for the sky
The path shall wind through peaks, in deep vales, on crater rims,
The morning brings rain, and the evening, storms, let us walk together.
Trees of Solace shall be our guideposts, the leaves beckon,
Now we see their blossoms strong against the high winds.
Advance, advance!  A journey never ending,
Follow your arousal, follow the passion of your words...
 Until all flowers shed, until we all part
Flowers, Bird, Wind and Moon gather here, sing here all that wish to celebrate
Give blessing to the bond, and love.

As an aside, the characters in AMG use a lot of magic without voicing spells, and they also sing a lot without voicing words.  Actual spells with words are usually reserved for special occasions, which I feel is the right way to do things.  You don't want to clutter up your text with words to a spell every three paragraphs, or whatever.

It's also worth noting that Kosuke Fujishima worked on AMG for twenty-five years.  Not only did his artwork change and improve dramatically over the life of the manga, his sense of how goddesses worked, what heaven was like, what the rules were and how spells worked and should be vocalized/written grew a lot.

So after this, what have we wound up with?  How shall I recreate my magical girl spells?  My first spell was a break enchantment spell:

Magical Okonomiyaki Chef Uchan,
Magical Okonomiyaki Chef Yoiko,
Dispell Enchantment:  Hallowed Okonomiyaki Sauce Love Swirl!  Realm of Savory Pancake!

Let's see if we can fancy it up a bit.  On a scale of one to super fancy, I judge this spell to only require a moderate fancy approach -- nothing over the top, but something more than what I came up with the first time.

My first instinct was to try and match some aspect of okonomiyaki with the actual results of the spell, but this proved difficult to do and kind of goofy to boot.  I mean, if you're going to create a shield spell, is the shield going to be made of pancake batter?  Okonomiyaki sauce?  Shredded cabbage?  No.  That way madness lies.  Instead, I've decided to just pair a couple lines of sensual or florid description randomly with whatever other lines fit the desired spell.  So:

The scent of savory pancakes sizzle on the grill,
The sweet aroma wafts on the wind,
Arise, spirits of hot steel and the open flame,
Break this enchantment which clouds the vision of my comrades

I like this more than what I had previously (above).  And actually, right after saying I was only pairing two random lines about okonomiyaki with the spell, I managed to actually tie the descriptive food part into the spell itself, so go me!  I like the approach of calling on the spirits of okonomiyaki cooking -- I think I'll stick with that formula for all of their spells.

Also I think I'll dispense with the magical girls calling out their full names every time they do magic.  It fits the genre but it gets annoying.  It might be good to do once only, the first time they cast a spell, then never again.

Magical Okonomiyaki Chef Uchan,
Magical Okonomiyaki Chef Yoiko,
Protection Spell:  Okonomiyaki Batter, Air Bubbles of Shielding!

Let's give this one the moderately fancy spell treatment as well:

Golden amber flows the batter which binds together the okonomiyaki
Sauce like burnished caramel thickly coats the surface
To you I cry, oh spirits of the batter and spirits of the sauce
Provide a protecting shield to shelter my allies

Bingo!  Spells that sound like spells -- at leat to me!  I think I'm satisfied with the results.  ^_^

What To Do For NaNoWriMo?

I haven't decided what I'm going to work on for NaNoWriMo.  As usual I have too many existing projects to want to start something new.  My choices:

1.  Random Grandpa Anarchy Stories.  I have a lot of them.  This would allow me to finish the arc I'm working on currently before jumping into something else.

2.  Longer Unfinished Grandpa Anarchy Stories.  I have several:

World of Hero (book 2) one of my oldest stories and a take on the cancellation of City of Heroes in 2013

Second Class (book 4) a story about the Black Moon Maidens and about Nina Ballerina leaving the League of Two-Fisted Justice

Oz On The Half Shell (book 5) a nearly finished story about fantasy realms and someone trying to take Grandpa Anarchy's place (who happens to be a version of Grandpa Anarchy)

3.  Grandpa Anarchy:  Serial Anarchy.  This is a planned novel with a cliffhanger ending for every chapter.  I came up with it for one of my NaNo projects several years ago, and never got further than the first three chapters.

4.  Grandpa Anarchy:  The Companions.  This is another old NaNo project that I didn't finish; it is a series of stories about Kid Anarchy in the 1920's and the different companions that he had (one story per companion).  I have several partially-written stories for this project.

5.  Grandpa Anarchy:  Magical Girl Death Match.  This is a plotted idea that I've never written.  It would be a novel-length story involving a deadly magical girl smart phone game run by aliens.  Bonus:  I know a lot more about the aliens now since they've appeared in my most recent series of stories.

6.  Grandpa Anarchy:  Anarchy On Vacation.  Another planned series of stories on a theme, Grandpa Anarchy goes on vacation and others must fill in for him.  Meanwhile, he and Popeye Khan go on a quest to track down a certain demon... so basically he isn't really vacationing.

7.  Girls School (anime fan fiction).  I haven't worked in my sprawling Ranma 1/2 fan fiction story in a few years.  It'll never be finished, but I'd like to at least wrap up the plots I started and am in the middle of.  I forget how much of it has been published.

8.  Nerima All Stars (anime fan fiction).  I wrote on this for one NaNoWriMo, and it's not complete.  I've never published it.  It involves Ranma 1/2, Ah My Goddess, and superheroes.  I'd like to complete it so I can publish it, but I'm not sure even 50,000 words would wrap it up.

9.  A Goddess In Oz (anime  fan fiction).  Well to be honest I'm not going to tackle this one I think, but it would be nice to finish it at last.  It's mostly an Oz/Ah My Goddess crossover, but there are other anime characters that were going to show up later.  I had a good plan for how the story would go.

Like I said, I don't really plan to start anything new, so those are my options.

Writing Update October 25 2019

345a  Dark Magical Interlude 1 934 words
345b  Goodwill Ambassador 2155 words
346a  Just Like Sailor Moon 1347 words
346b  Dark Magical Interlude 2 496 words
347   Motivation 1232 words
348   Dark Kingdom 1197 words
349   Double Trouble 1547 words
350a  Dark Magical Interlude 3 939 words
350b  Vlog Slog 1502 words
351   Purpose 1804 words
352   Out of Phaeton 1538 words
353   Starchild 1980 words
354   Trapped on Titan 1616 words
355   Space Opera 1097 words
355b  Ancient Robot Interlude 1 381 words
356   Here Be Dragons 2204 words
357   Shadow Magic 1029 words
358   Soul of the Matter 1538 words
359   Ring Thing 1397 words
359b Interlude of Terror 483  words
360   Wish Upon A Moon 1528 words
361   Witch Queen of Titan 1750 words
362   Dark Teatime 1189 words
363   Disaster Station 2322 words
364   Realm of Magic 2055 words
365   Money Shot 1219 words
365   Scattered Seeds 1765 words
366   Dark Magic Trap 2206 words
367   Pink Light 1610 words
368   Big-Ass Space Ship (incomplete)
369   Save Your Enemy (incomplete)
370  Tsundere/Dead To Me
371  A Bomb In Heaven
372  Ancient Cosmic Evil

I posted this to Twitter a couple of weeks ago, but I had a dream that helped me figure out exactly how to wrap up all of my stories and tie them together.  I was going to post about it to this blog -- maybe last Friday -- but I never did.  In any case, I've been writing towards this goal ever since, and I still think it can work.

I read Goodwill Ambassador for writer's night on Saturday 10/19.  I think people liked it.  I rewrote it slightly on Monday based on people's comments.

My big accomplishments for this week were to complete Disaster Station and to rewrite Scattered Seeds.  These two stories were kind of holding me up from going any further with my plot, until I'd fixed them.  I also wrote a short Interlude of Terror which is simple but advances some of the plot.

At this point I'm not sure what I want to write next, but I'm pretty clear on what needs to happen for Save Your Enemy and A Bomb In Heaven.  The second of these stories might also include everything I was going to do for two other story ideas, Tsundere and  Dead To Me.  So maybe all three of those are just one story.  The thing I call Big-Ass Space Ship is quite nebulous -- Grandpa Anarchy and other members of the New League of Two-Fisted Justice have been picked up by a massive space ship which supports an interstellar hero team lead by Super Joe, who is kind of a nephew to Grandpa Anarchy in a way.  They're pursuing an international villain who is probably the mother of Tia-An, the three-year-old supergirl that Grandpa and company rescued earlier... and somehow that's all going to tie in to everything else that's going on, but I'm not sure exactly how just yet.

Basically, I have the setting for the story, but not the story.

I've written about 42,000 words between August and October.  On the one hand that's a great deal more than I'd written in the previous year and a half, but on the other hand 15,000 words a month isn't going to cut it for NaNoWriMo.

On the third hand, there's hope that I can wrap up my story arc here before November.  Or at least get pretty close.

I still need to rewrite Vlog Slog and Ancient Robot Interlude, but overall things are going well.