As fate would have it, the Fandom Princess’ parents, the King and Queen, were so happy with how her studies were turning out in the first few weeks of her senior year that they sent her a surprise by troll mail. The Princess awoke one Sunday morning to loud thumping noises coming from outside the castle. She looked out the window and saw a group of large, tree-height trolls thudding towards the castle doors. Now, trolls only stopped by the castle with special mail for the students, so the Princess knew that they had something quite interesting in the huge sacks that they were carrying over their backs.

She threw her covers back and called for her faithful companion, a white and grey German Shepard named Ghost. As Ghost ran into the room to greet her, shaking his body to wake himself up, she pulled on a thick robe, donned fuzzy slippers, and ran out of the room. She and Ghost sprinted down the corridors and stone steps, a few other students who had also been awoken by the sound of the trolls also racing to entrance of the castle.

A few professors were already at the door to greet the trolls and accept the packages. That morning, only two people had received troll mail; the Princess and a boy named Marcus who was in the Princess’ Worldly History class (she absolutely despised him and secretly hoped that her gift was better than his). As the trolls caught sight of the Princess, they bowed their heads to show their respects before turning and continuing away from the castle and towards town.

The students who hadn’t received anything grumbled in disappointment and returned up the stairs and corridors to go back to sleep. The Princess and Marcus remained, each with a smile taking up the majority of their faces. When the professor, however, handed the Princess a small, ruby parcel, her smile faded, especially when compared to Marcus’ large sack.

“You’ll like it,” the professor said, and patted the Princess on the shoulder.

She scrunched her nose and turned, motioning for Ghost to follow her. Curiosity overtook her, but she still waited until she had made it all the way back to her private quarters before opening the parcel. The first thing she saw was a note from her parents.

“Use it wisely and write us back. Love, your parents.” It said. Underneath the note was a silver chain, a ruby gem attached at the end of it. The Princess recognized the gem instantly as a magical artifact. What is did, she did not know, but a trip to the library later in the day would hopefully answer her question. Overcome with joy and love, she decided to write to her parents about her week before going to the library, highlighting her academic work and the tasks given to her from the silver-haired wizard.

This week of bootcamp was definitely a little more challenging than the first, but I welcomed the challenge with open arms (and multiple cups of coffee). We had a list of requirements that we had to make sure we finished, and I proudly was able to do them all and keep my sanity whilst doing them!

Firstly, we had to set up up a new forwarding email address. Easy enough! I created the email and tested it from my school email to make sure that it would forward to my Gmail account. ‘Twas super successful! And, if anyone wishes to contact me in the near future, please use this email (I like it a lot more than my more professional one, anyway): [email protected]

Secondly, we had to double and triple check that our blog was listed among the rest of our class for this semester. 

Presto! I’m number 17! Woot!

Well, now we get into the more detailed stuff: discussing the customization of our blog. I had changed the theme last week, but this week I added those cool widgets in and added those helpful plug-ins (Askimet, Jetpack, and Awesome Flickr Gallery), and I absolutely love how they’ve made my blog a lot more versatile. I rearranged the order of widgets and even added in the Twitter and Subscribe widgets. I think the picture and colors I chose for my new theme very much fit in with the ‘fantasy’ aspect that I’m trying to capture with this blog, but also it’s very clean and organized. In the coming weeks, I’d love to be able to change the colors a little more, and even see if there is another them in which I can push the fantasy feeling even more. Maybe even add a section in which I can purely tell little stories about the Princess and her adventures (for when I want to push my own creative writing skills). I think it might be fun.

Also this week, we had to set up the home front/welcome website and somehow connect it to the one we are using for our DS106 class. Mine is pretty simple. I used the first theme that I had originally had for the ds106 website called “Paradise” and took away some widgets just to keep it minuscule. I then added a special sentence in my onw (and only) post on the page and in the About section that links to The Fandom Princess’ adventures. Check it out. And I’ll be honest, I cannot wait to be able to expand on that one after taking this class! I have so many great ideas that I think I will be able to do once I know how to navigate the blogging world a little more.

Our Daily Create aka creative-push-ups were also, wait for it, DOUBLED this week! Woot! Being an English and Creative Writing major, I felt it was fitting to do the writing prompts, but I had a bunch of fun trying to think of what to write for them. And believe it or not, describing the sky without using any color words was actually the most difficult one. In any case, my responses are below (and try clicking the pictures! I thought that trick was wicked cool):

Our final assignment for last week of bootcamp was to create a GIF (*insert maniacal laugh here*). Rather than go through the process/my issues of creating the GIF again, you all are more than welcome to read about that adventure here.

All in all, I think this week was a lot of fun. There was a lot of Tiffany-making-random-noises-of-frustration, but I think I learned a lot. Like, I would have never been able to make a GIF myself without the help of the DS106 Handbook! I also have a higher appreciation of people on Tumblr who are constantly making GIFs. It takes a lot of patience. The experience of the class is going wonderfully. I appreciate the praise I’m getting for my posts, especially since I tend to go on and on about the princess and her adventures. But I guess if it’s a good thing, then I’ll keep right at it! Until next week!