I had a title but I've forgotten it

     So, as I've been slowly chugging along on my crazy-long fanfic (at least, it feels crazy long to me, since it'll likely reach 300k or more, but strangely that sort of length doesn't seem as unusual in fanfic as in published works (possibly the lack of editors to say "whoa, dial it down!")), I've still been periodically turning to my homemade map.

    Though more for the sake of consulting it rather than working on it, typically.  Still, I did make some major changes lately!  This is the latest version I've posted here:

    Some obvious problems with it (aside from the fact that I didn't turn any of the different sets of lines invisible, so you get all the stages of the war at once), like the fact that the ground looks like dead grass and the label in the corner is half-obscured by the vignette filter.

    Well, as I entered into the post-war sequence, I realized I needed to update the map, because I needed to know how the land would be divided among the victors.  So I went in and made a new version...fixing up a few problems while I was at it...

    I think it's an enormous improvement!  (The fact that they added that "mist" vignette filter to the available options helped, obviously...)  I managed to make the ground look healthier, and found out how to make the filters not apply to all the levels.  I'm not sure about the color-coding by the borders; it might be too much?  (If you're wondering about the straight line right above the label, that's a mistake that I noticed and corrected shortly after exporting the picture.  I seem to recall fixing a few other things as well but I no longer recall what they were...)

    Hmm...looking at the map now, I can see I need to reduce the amount of land granted to the Yao Clan.  And maybe to the Ouyang Clan, too.  Mmm, no, on the other hand, the Ouyang Clan's extra land is cutting into the Jiang Clan's likely territory, so that accords with the way the other leaders don't take Jiang Cheng seriously because he's too young.  The bigger problem is that the Lan Clan's area is too small, but...enh, the whole point is that the Jin Clan is taking way too much for themselves, so I guess it's okay?  (Considering how long it'll be before I actually finish the fic, it certainly doesn't matter just at the moment.)

    Changing the subject...

    I'm really torn by titles lately.

    I have a super-short fic I want to post, only I can't think of a good title for it.  (Also having some trouble figuring out how to tag it and how to explain that the romance is skipped over in a massive time jump so it goes from "about to start" to "been lovers for years" because as someone thoroughly aromantic I'm not in the least sure how to write a romance in that setting that feels even slightly natural.  (It's a sort of Hades and Persephone/Beauty and the Beast type of situation.  I've only tried to write that sort of thing on a few very rare occasions, mainly when I was trying to write out all the Greek myths on my old blog, and what I ended up doing for Hades and Persephone was to literally crib from Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast.  (Or maybe it was just from the traditional folktale version.  Which is kind of the same thing, really...))  I feel like it's still a pretty decent fic despite that, but it's hard to know how to describe it to others such that they'll want to read it.)  The working title for the fic was "Dragonji's prize" which made a lot more sense when I thought it was going to descend into smut after three scenes.  (Though I was going to have to find a co-author to actually write the smut part!)  I think the current title I'm considering is "The Dragon's Price," which...is better, but...🤷‍♀️

    And then there's the massive fic I'm working on.  The title on the Word file is, quite literally, "Jiang Cheng fic in need of a title.docx".  Which, yeah, sums it up perfectly for me, but whenever it's finished, I can't very well post it like that!  🤣  If it had any overall theme (apart from me trying to make it up to the character for having killed him off via heart attack in his late forties in one of my earlier fics) I might have a better time trying to come up with a title, but...I'm just too much of a pantser to be able to write to a theme rather than simply having an idea for a story and running with it.  If I'm lucky, a theme will come out as I go, or at least enough suggestion of a theme that I can add one on a second draft, but so far I'm not really seeing much of one.  (And when you aren't seeing a theme yet 226k words into a draft, there probably just isn't one.)

    Tch.

    I really didn't intend to turn this blog into "my fandom journey" but it seems like it's going down that road.

    Oh well.  It's just me shouting into the void anyway, so what does it matter what I happen to be shouting about?

    (In other news, the bot that for some reason viewed my blog over 11,000 times since this spring (peaking at 914 views in a single day last month) finally seems to have stopped.  I have no idea why someone set a bot to loading and reloading the main page of my blog (without ever viewing any individual posts) so many times, but...I guess it was a programming glitch?  It didn't even leave any spam comments, though maybe that's because the main page doesn't have a comment link on it, so...I don't know.  It's weird.  If I'm being honest, going back to the days when it's rare to have more than a handful of views a month will be a little depressing, but getting hundreds of views a day that don't have an actual person behind them is kinda creepy, so I guess it evens out?)