I managed to finish Chapter 2 of TBP and I would’ve done more if it wasn’t for the small boss insisting rather vociferously that I go to bed. More of the time was spent working on the outline some more to fill in underdeveloped parts of the story. I really don’t know what I was thinking when I last redid the thing. A lot of plotlines were given no setup whatsoever. Now I think I have it pretty well set. All the pieces should come together in a reasonable fashion. You might argue I’ve got too many plotlines, but this isn’t too different from most of my other stories, for better or for worse. We’ll see how the narrative flows as we continue to develop the story. With that, it’s time to move on to CeleKing1. The goal is to get at least two chapters knocked out this week. We’ll see if I can pull it off. Stay tuned.

I did about half quota on Chapter 10 of TBP one day and a scant few lines on Chapter 11 the next. Fortunately, I have an evening wide open to focus on making up for lost time.

In other news, in case anyone was wondering, I succeeded in unlocking SR Ranko in GBF. I usually don’t put that much time, effort or resources into the Kosenjou because I’m not all that interested in trying to get the Jutenshu at present, but I wanted to grind the Ranko summon up to Level 100 as quickly as I could. SR Ranko is interesting in that her third ability doesn’t unlock until Level 65. (Normally the unlock happens at Level 35 for SR charas.) I’m not a big fan of the internal monologue that translates her usual dialog. Her character is more interesting without it. (Although it does make it sound like she’s possessed the original body, which is thematically appropriate, I guess.) Oh, and just a bit of random advice to all you out there, if you find yourself transported to a fantasy world, you may not want to go around declaring yourself the Demon Queen Brunnhilde. You may find yourself the target of jobber adventurers looking to carve a name for themselves out of your hide.

Well, one more day of TBP and I’ll be back on CeleKing1. Stay tuned.

I only made half quota working on the newly inserted Chapter 10 of TBP. Oddly, the chapter was in my old outline but not the new one. I can’t imagine why I took it out because it establishes one of the players in the great game. Otherwise you just have him showing up out of nowhere near the end. Well, who knows what I was thinking at the time? Anyway, here’s to doing a little better next time around. Stay tuned.

I did some writing on Chapter 14, a new insertion as I realized that I’d brought Umbriel into the story and then promptly did nothing with him until the end. Oops. ^o^ Well, that’s been resolved. Maybe when Sunday rolls around, I can start working on some chronological progress. Stay tuned.

I did some writing on Chapter 9 of TBP. Yes, I know that’s a jump ahead in the story, but it happened to be the scene that came to mind. One of the problems I have is that I already have bits and pieces written all over the place, but I don’t have access to the content while I’m at work, which can result in issues of overlap and such that I have to iron out later. So it goes. More to come. Stay tuned.

I fell short of my goal. I wrote a foreword and made some progress on the prologue of TSoA1, but most of my time was spent refining the outline for the next two books and figuring out locations for the chapters. I also finished getting caught up on my backlog of reviews, so it wasn’t like I just frittered the time away. Anyway, it’s on to TBP. Stay tuned.

After missing two days, I managed to meet quota by writing some dialog for Chapters 15 and 17 of TSoA1. I haven’t been specific up until now, but the outline is pretty well set at this point. In fact, there are only a handful of chapters I haven’t written anything for yet. I need to work on actually completing chapters now and I think I’ll start by at least wrapping up the prologue before it’s time to switch over. I can make up for lost time while I’m at it. Stay tuned.

I wrote some more scattered dialog, centering on the character of Vortimer. Some interesting stuff going on there. A little under quota, but I’ll see what I can do to make up for it. Stay tuned.

This may not interest you at all, but for the sake of posterity, I’m going to detail what I’ve been obsessing over the past several days. The latest event in Granblue Fantasy is a collaboration with The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls. The last collab I tangled with was the Tales of Asteria event back in June. That didn’t work out for me because I wasn’t able to link accounts. I was expecting the same deal here. I prefer to play GBF as a Chome App on my laptop rather than on my phone for a variety of reasons. Cinderella Girls has a Chrome App too, but you can’t link accounts via the PC version. Well, here’s my genius at work. I loaded both games in my phone via their web apps (as opposed to installing the apps as my old Galaxy S2 can’t handle it) and succeeded in linking the accounts. Then I was able to play the PC version of both and still reap the benefits.

My main goal was just to get the characters that were collab rewards, but then I learned of another character who was previously a summon with some steep requirements for acquisition. That character is Ranko Kanzaki and the requirements are as follows:

1. Acquire all seven collab characters. Two are new and two were introduced in the rerun event from March. Here are their requirements:
a. Miria – attain 1000 trust points
b. Anastasia – clear the first panel mission in Cinderella Girls
c. Rin – attain 1000 trust points
d. Mio – reach Level 20 in Cinderella Girls
e. Uzuki – beat the event story chapters
f. Airi – reach Level 39 in Cinderella Girls
g. Sachiko – treasure exchange (one of the materials appearing only during a rare encounter)
2. Acquire the Brunnhilde summon.
3. Cast Brunnhilde 666 times in order to collect four copies of the Ranko Kanzaki summon. (The titles of each stage being a necessary component, so simply doing the treasure exchange to three-star a Ranko summon won’t cut it.) Raise the Ranko summon to Level 100.
4. Defeat Tiamat, Leviathan, Colossus, Yggdrasil, Chevalier, and Celeste with the Ranko summon (which means eyeballing an approximate 20K HP window for the deathblow).
5. Get a title for raising Rin and Anastasia to Level 50.
6. Get a title for raising Miria, Airi and Mio to Level 60.
7. Get a title for raising Miria, Sachiko and Uzuki to Level 70.
8. Get a title for the above three titles.
9. Clear the two new Fate Episodes that open up.
10. Fulfill the treasure requirements to four-star the Ranko summon.
11. Receive SR Ranko.

Getting to Level 39 in Cinderella Girls wasn’t that hard. I managed it in two sittings as there’s currently zero stamina cost up through Ikebukuro and half cost through Fukui. (You get XP by doing jobs in various cities.) Sachiko was the biggest pain to get because of the Purple Jewels that drop with the Jewel Mimic rare encounter. Happily, I’d already three-starred the Ranko summon, so that was one less thing, but leveling her was another story. I thought using her against the six main summons would be more of a pain than it was, particularly with the limited number of spawns per day, but I managed it without too much trouble. Leveling the girls appeared more daunting as it takes 227,550 XP to reach 70. Grinding the event monsters on Extreme nets about 2K XP with the Halloween event’s 50% bonus. Because I wanted to three-star Brunnhilde, I was going to be doing a lot of grinding anyway, so this was manageable, but recall my complaint about acquiring Sachiko, the last chara I got and one who needs to hit 70. I didn’t notice that I had to get the Ranko summon to 100 (which is difficult as summons are much more difficult to grind despite the lower XP requirement, about 72K to reach 100), and that was when I realized that only the acquisition of the seven girls has to be done before the event is over. Ha ha ha. Here I was all panicking and trying to crunch numbers to optimize my time and meet the milestones when there’s not any need for me to rush at all at this point. I’d still like to unlock SR Ranko before the week’s out, but if I have to wait while I’m leveling her summon version, that’s fine.

Now, you might find it silly to expend so much time energy and brainpower on a silly little mobile game and you’d be right, but we all need a vice or two to remind us that we’re human and gaming addiction is mine. This hardly excuses me falling short of any progress goals, but thankfully, I can’t play at work, so guess what I do during my breaks. By the by, don’t be surprised if reviews of the Cinderella Girls anime show up in the not so distant future. ^_^;

So I didn’t get any writing done Monday due to my focus on a certain goal I’ll be detailing in an upcoming Rambling post. Rather than focus on a particular chapter of TSoA1, I wrote a bunch of dialog for several episodes throughout the story. I suppose I usually come up with the dialog first and then fill out the narrative, but it feels especially pronounced in this book. Anyway, more to come. Stay tuned.