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Welcome back!  The last two weeks have been…phew.  How to describe it…I don’t know how so much has changed so fast.  That’s life, I guess.  Oh how I miss the calm days when everything seemed to be relatively stable…

I feel like I’ve fallen behind on writing, which sucks!  I wanted to finish Click, Click, Boom before the end of the year, but now I really don’t see how that can happen.  I still have like eight chapters to go since I haven’t been able to write much.  It’s a challenge to write when my mind is pulled in all these different directions, trying to figure out what to do or what’s going on.

A little bit of what’s been going on…

I had a business idea!  That will remain a secret, but I’ve been putting some effort into figuring out how that might work.  It’s not writing related, actually, but it would still be pretty cool if it worked out.

Our assistant at work put in her notice.  Which, on a small team of only three people, is a pretty big loss.  Now, we’re scrambling trying to find a replacement, but it’s been slim pickings.  We’ve only had two applicants, both of whom are overqualified for the position so that makes things a little awkward.  They’re both like, “Sure, I’ll do that position for a little while,” but obviously their definition of a little while and ours is going to be vastly different.  Work drama XD

Violet’s new medicine for her IBD is making her feel a little sick, I think, so that’s an ongoing concern.  We really need to find something that will bring down the inflammation for her :(

I’m also in the midst of studying for a new industry designation, so that’s been wiping out my mental capacity pretty regularly.  Thankfully, I should be taking the test in a week or so, and then that will be off of my plate.

And then of course there’s general holiday stuff.  I’m in charge of making the pumpkin pie, pumpkin roll, and cranberry nut bread.  Who else is in charge of baking for the holidays??  Anything special your families make?

Writing has fallen a bit to the wayside amidst this other stuff, but I want to write.  At least I’ve been able to proofread on Thursdays though!  Although, the last couple of chapters haven’t exactly been the cheeriest of things to come back to.  And Ruby’s chapter…well, we’ll get to her chapter in a bit.  First, we can talk about Weiss!

Weiss’ chapter is a whirlwind.  There’s a lot going on.  A lot more than might be typical in my chapters, but I didn’t really see a way around it.  There are lots of different characters making an appearance and multiple different locations!  (You know how I feel about moving the characters too much from place to place because then I feel like I need to describe their movement and the new location!)

The chapter starts off cute and happy, so I’m going to focus on that before we go on a roller coaster ride.  Weiss and Ruby wake up in Weiss’ bed, all warm and snuggly after spending another night together.

Weiss’ part of the story is starting to look up, right?  She’s learned some confidence, she’s figuring out how to be a leader, and she got the girl.  And that girl has started healing some of the serious scars from her childhood.  I’ve always subscribed to the belief that Weiss is seriously touch-starved, so I think that her being able to hold Ruby’s hand and be intimate is very cathartic to her.

Oh, tangent - did I mention that I had an idea for a smutty White Rose story, in a similar vein to Dirty Little Secret?  I don't know if I’ll ever get around to writing it.  It’s always a little hard for me to put Ruby in sexual situations.  Ponytail Ruby from Justice League Part 2, however…

I have no problem having Weiss drool over Ruby though, which would be kind of fun by itself.  I need to finish Click, Click, Boom before I do anything else though!

Anyway, Weiss in this story has a lot on her hands between Ruby leaving and an attempted insurrection.  I also made her go from her bedroom to the palace foyer, then to the infirmary to check on Robyn, before up to the roof to sneak a few more kisses before Ruby leaves.  Her goal is simply, ‘I want to spend as much time with Ruby as possible.’

Then the story arrives.

Misinformation continues to be a background theme as Weiss and Ruby hear a truth and a lie - the truth being that Vale had fallen but the lie that Yang was dead.  This lie served a purpose though…it upset Ruby, and upset Ruby convinces James to rush off to figure out what’s the truth.  James needed to get out of the scene because the rest of the chapter would go really differently if he was around.

But he’s not!  He’s chasing down the truth while Weiss consoles Ruby.

Ruby’s tears can destroy kingdoms.

Maybe not literally, but Weiss and James are ready to tear Vale down brick by brick if that means making Ruby feel better.

Not to worry - Sun arrives to deliver some slightly positive news - Yang’s not dead!  She’s just…still dying.  Hooray?

Aren’t we glad that Winter showed Sun how to sneak onto the palace grounds undetected?  And aren’t we extra glad that Weiss and Ruby just happen to be outside where Sun can easily find them rather than tucked away indoors where it’d be practically impossible for him to reach them?  What good fortune!

Either I came up with a way for Sun to sneak into the palace and find them without getting caught, or I put Weiss and Ruby outside for him to find.  One of those was much easier than the other, and I’m in the business of making things easier on myself!

So Sun can deliver his news, which Ruby takes as good news.  There’s hope!  She can’t take the slow way home anymore though, so she jumps right off the balcony and is gone like the wind.  Baller.

But wait, there’s more!

Ok, everyone already knew that Ironwood was bad.  That was pretty obvious by him being Ironwood, who is…bad…and by him being super sketchy and sus in general.  But he reveals himself at last, since he finally realized that he can’t control Weiss like how he thought he could.  She ordered him to change the treaty, remember?  And then she told him off, and didn’t listen to him when he accused James of attacking Robyn Hill.

Basically, he got impatient.

And, as villains do, he underestimates Weiss so much that he doesn’t mind explaining his goal to her.  He wants to be king, duh!  All he has to do is kill Weiss and Robyn, and voila.  King of Atlas.

I love how Weiss is like, “Oh, this is kind of bad,” until he says that he wanted to kill Ruby too.  At that point, Weiss is like, “Oh, hell no.”

Thank god Winter taught Weiss how to fight.  Ironwood thinks he’s going up against someone defenseless, but he’s actually facing someone more powerful than him who was trained by the former king’s ‘enforcer,’ which sounds like someone who probably did a lot of fighting!

It’s not much of a fight between them, so I wrote it that way.  She pretty easily beats him down, then she flexes her new Queenly muscles when he tries to use her guards against her.  She’s not about to let that happen either.

The Queen of Atlas has finally arrived.

And the Queen of Vale has departed.

I’ve read Ruby’s chapter at least four times now, and I’ve cried every single time.  Ugh.  Sister stuff is hard for me since I am an older sister and I love my little sister dearly, so Yang and Ruby’s relationship can hit right in the feels.

I thought it so sweet and sad that the two sisters, who would do anything for Vale, are now like, ‘Ok, Vale needs to hold on just a second while I deal with this first.’  That’s also my way of keeping the story focused on Yang while the trouble in Vale brews in the distance.  Ruby and Blake want to focus on Yang, and I do too.

Even though focusing on Yang is pretty awful right now.  There’s just something about reducing the ‘strong one’ to a withered shell of themselves that royally hurts.

This chapter was initially pretty short - it started with Ruby already in the Badlands and she quickly found Blake - so I beefed it up with some ‘operational’ items.  I guess we could consider them check-ins on the state of the world outside of the palace walls.  The Atlesian army is still lingering around, waiting for the treaty to call them home.  The Badlands is still in a rough spot - there are more people around, but they don’t trust each other yet.  The Resistance is humming away though!  Doing the rough work getting life back on its feet.

This was just me giving everyone a little glimpse of our progress.  And there has been some progress!  Incremental, but it’s still there.  That should make us feel better, right?  The Badlands is healing.  There’s hope for a brighter future.

I’m sure that’s the feeling everyone took out of this chapter - hope.  That’s definitely not what it leaves me with!

Originally, Ruby raced to the Badlands and found Sun, who led her to Blake.  It wasn’t until the second or third readthrough that I realized…Sun went to find Ruby in Atlas, and then Ruby finds Sun in the Badlands.  Huh.  How does that work out??

It doesn’t.  That would require Sun to be faster than Ruby, and he’s definitely not!  So I had to rework that whole thing.  Blake still sends Sun to Atlas because he’s her most trusted friend, but Ruby has to find someone else in the Badlands to direct her to Blake.  That’s where those random Resistance recruits came in handy!

Except, at this stage, I hadn’t mentioned those recruits since they appeared way back in chapter…I don’t even know what chapter.  So I had to find another instance to bring them back into the story to remind us that they exist, which, fortunately, was in Blake’s most recent chapter while fleeing Vale.  Instead of Blake, Winter, and Yang making it to Sun’s house undetected (as was the original case), they’re intercepted by the Resistance!

Tada!  A reminder that Red exists, and that he’s still with the Resistance, so that I could have Ruby find him in this chapter.

I don’t know how much else I can say about this chapter other than “sad things make me sad!”  I can’t believe that Yang actually tried to tell Ruby about the Phage as if she was about to drop some big truth bomb.  Imagine if Ruby didn’t already know.  She literally would have raced to the Badlands and been in disbelief that her sister is already on death’s door.

And Yang confusing Ruby with Summer…oof.  Just stab me in the heart.  That was a late addition to the chapter.  I didn’t want to dwell on the angst too much, but I figured that when someone’s in that much pain, they can get a little delirious.  Ruby and Summer look alike so…

It’s one of those “That’s a great but also horrible ideas” that I ultimately went with.  I then went back to Yang’s previous chapter to set the stage for it by having Yang confuse Winter for Weiss (again, this is why writing in advance is my jam!).

At least Ruby made it back to Yang, right?  We can all celebrate that a little bit?

Also, imagine meeting your girlfriend’s long-lost sister under these circumstances.  Poor Ruby.  Hard to make a good first impression when you’re going to be bawling your eyes out!

We’re nearly there though.  Just a few more chapters…(or like ten) and we can all take a deep breath, and smile.  That’s my hope!

Until next time,

Miko

Comments

MelMon

This last chapter tore my heart out!…also, I must try this cranberry nut bread.

mikotyzini

If you're ever in socal around the holidays, it'll be here! I might make a test one this weekend... Just to sample for myself..