The Plot Bunnies Post!

Well, I didn't expect to get any writing done on Super Bowl Sunday. Especially since my favorite team the New York Giants is battling one of my most hated teams the New England Patriots. The last time the Giants and the Patriots met up in the Super Bowl, it was 2008 and the Patriots were about to close out a perfect season. The Giants bested them and released shirts that read "better than perfect." Meanwhile, back in Boston, a whole bunch of newspapers were wondering what to do with their already printed victory front pages.... derp.

So naturally, I'll be a bit too busy watching this rematch to concentrate on writing a blog update. Which is a shame because I've been working on both emotes for this blog AND finally legit-writing my seventh chapter! YAY! However, it's just too much to write out about THAT and I just don't have that kind of time today! *Busily works on cleaning the house for the Super Bowl party*

Luckily, I've been wanting to do a Plot Bunnies post for a while now, and it just happens to be the perfect filler post for days where I don't want - or don't have time - to write a blog update! The best part is that I actually wrote this post a while ahead of time and I just held on to it. YAY laziness! Or yay, thinking ahead - whichever.

Point is, spending five minutes strapping on that Super Bowl opening to this post was a LOT faster than spending over an hour typing up a legit post about my emote-making and legit-writing... At least you have something to look forward to for next week....

Anyway, for those of you who haven't checked out the fanfiction dictionary I have in the "Handy Links" section to the right, here's what I mean by Plot Bunnies:

"Plotbunny - An affectionate term for an idea that sticks in your head and you just HAVE to write it even if it goes nowhere or keeps going off into other ideas."

Thank you to Megan Freeman who created the site that hosts the dictionary, and therefore I'm assuming she also wrote it....

Anyway, here are the ideas bouncing around in my head waiting for me to write them.

1. The main spin-off of What is Truly Meant to Be. I've had this baby in my head nearly as long as I've had the main story in my head. This would be a companion story, sort of. The story would be mostly centered around an original character named Celeste. She has a thing for Helga's boyfriend *SPOILER*. While Arnold is desperately trying to win back Helga, Celeste has been trying to find a way to work up her courage to tell her own beloved how she feels. This story will be similar to the book "Ender's Shadow" in which scenes from the parent-story will be revisited, but from the perspective of the new lead character. The story will run mostly parallel with What is Truly Meant to Be and then continue past the ending of the parent story in order to show what happens after the parent story concluded. My biggest concern is trying to hint at Celeste during my main story, without really giving too much away. My other concern is to make her the perfect match for her intended, but not turn her in to a Mary Sue.
2. A secondary spin-off cropped up while thinking about this dreaded seventh chapter. As I've mentioned before, the chapter grew a life of its own and pretty much pushed to become its own story. I want to allow it. So I'll give the broad strokes in the chapter -as painful as it's proving to be to do that, and hopefully create a companion story that goes more in depth with the events. This will also allow me to play more with the OCs I created for the chapter, as well as a subplot I created and then had to discard because the chapter was getting too huge. Out of the two spin-offs, this one will probably be written first since I can work on it as soon as the next chapter is done and up. Whereas the Celeste spin-off mentioned above would have to wait until the original story is done - well, more or less.... Plus, even though I'm going in to more detail with this story, none of the chapters feel that "big" and so it might be a quick write.
3. As I was thinking about the Celeste story and which characters would be matched up when they are in high school, I thought about Harold and Patty. I know people like to ship Rhonda and Harold together, but I'm a big Harold and Patty fan! I also think that they'd become those childhood friends who never new how to break out of the friend zone with each other. So they'll be in high school, crushing hard on each other and not doing anything about it for fear of "ruining the friendship" *gag* I hate that line.... This got me thinking about how much fun it would be to write a fluff story about Harold and Patty. YAY! Perhaps I'll stash that one away for next Valentine's....
4. There aren't nearly enough stories about Arnold's grandparents "Steely" Phil and "Pookie" Gertie. I want to write a story about their lives. How they started off similar to Arnold and Helga - Gertie picking on Phil all though school but in reality she loved him - and how that grew in to the ageless love we all know. The show canon seems to display their love as one that truly blossomed mildly-late in life and it sort of reminded me of the Nicolas Sparks book "The Notebook". I want to do a loose parody of the story, using Phil and Gertie. I already set up a rough timeline of Phil's life. You can check that out under my DeviantArt account.
5. My favorite Shakespearian play is "Much Ado About Nothing" and I attempted to come up with a way to do a parody using the Hey Arnold! cast. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to fit naturally. Then I re-watched the episode "Weird Cousin". In that episode, we're introduced to Arnold's antithesis cousin Arnie. Arnold's love interest Lila falls for Arnie. Helga tricks her love Arnold in to dating her to try to make Lila jealous. Instead, the charade just causes Arnie to fall in love with Helga. So now we have the weird love circle of Helga loves Arnold who loves Lila who loves Arnie who loves Helga..... That's when I realized that the Hey Arnold! cast works PERFECTLY for Shakespearian comedy - just not "Much Ado About Nothing"! I want to now do a Shakespeare parody of "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
   ** Gerald and Phoebe will be the betrothed Theseus and Hippolyta whose wedding starts all the chaos.
   **Arnie is Lysander - a man who runs away to marry Hermia, but ends up in love with both Hermia and Helena throughout the course of the play.
   **Arnold is Demetrius - a man who loves Hermia and is betrothed to her, forcing her to run away with Lysander. He also ends up falling in love with Helena throughout the play.
   **Lila is the fair Hermia - the woman who gains affection from both Demetrius (her intended) and Lysander (her beloved).
   **Helga is the poor Helena - the woman who is in love with Demetrius, but is frequently shunned affection from him. She gets surprised when she goes from undesirable to being the center of a love triangle between Lysander and Demetrius.
   **Curly is crazy Nick Bottom - the eccentric and cocky actor whose head gets turned in to that of a donkey and whom Queen Titania is tricked in to loving.
   **Which of course means I need Rhonda as Queen Titania - Queen of the Fairies and estranged from her husband over an argument about a changling ward of hers. She's tricked to fall in love with the donkey-headed Bottom.
   **If Rhonda isn't with Curly she must be with Harold - the King of the Fairies: Oberon. Using "An Egg Story" as a base, we'll have Rhonda and Harold unhappily matched up and that poor egg as Titania's changling ward. As a prank, Oberon convinces his right-hand-man Puck to trick Titania in to falling in love with Bottom.
   **I'm not sure who I'd like as Puck. Someone so crazy would be perfect for Curly, but I just HAD to make him Bottom so he and Rhonda could hook up. Harold's lackeys are Stinky and Sid, so perhaps one of them could be Puck. Then again, they also would fit perfectly with the rest of Bottom's acting troupe. I could just picture Stinky holding up his arms and going "I am a wall..." At one point it was mentioned that there was another prankster of the series - who happened to wear wings - Gerald's kid sister Timberly. It also works since, like poor Puck, Timberly has the best intentions, but goofs things up. Perhaps I'll do a gender swap and make her Puck aka ROBYN Goodfellow - see? The name can be gender swapped! ^_^ Now my only reservation is that Timberly doesn't interact with Harold too much and therefore Gerald would now make the best Oberon.... but I can't have him and Phoebe fighting - let alone have Phoebe fall for someone else, even if it is through a love potion....
   **Anyway, I'd combine Titania's fairy entourage to simply the most wellknown: Peaseblossom - Nadine.
   **Along with Bottom, there are five other members of the acting troupe.
   *~*~*Eugene would probably be Peter Quince as the leader of the troupe.
   *~*~*Although it was customary for only males to be actors back then - and it's funny to see a guy dressed in drag - I think Sheena would be Francis Flute, the (wo)man who plays the female lead Thisbe. This works out well since Francis is uni-sex and can easily be gender-swapped.
   *~*~*As I said before, I just can't help but think of Stinky as Tom Snout, the man who plays The Wall.
   *~*~*The last two would be Robin Starve who plays Moonshine, and Snug who plays the Lion. Sid has to be one of them, and I need to think of one last player. I'll have to re-read the play to figure out who best fits these last two parts.
   I also need to decide if I'm putting the HA! crew in to the setting of "A Midsummer Nights Dream" or if I want to take the SITUATION of the play and put it in to the HA! setting. I also need to determine if I want to use the play's character names, if I want to change the play's characters to the names of the HA! characters "playing" them, or if I want to do something like the "What's Opera, Arnold?" episode and make a parody name combining the HA! and play character names....
   Man.... I thought A LOT about this idea! I want to write it so bad!!!!
6. I don't exactly have a plot yet, but I kinda know what Lila must go through - single parent scraping by best they can, child has to put on a cheerful face to keep the parent from getting discouraged, the rough financial homelife and/or other such reasons results in the child wanting anything and everything outside the home to be sunshine and roses, the child wants EVERYONE to love and accept them, the "perfect, people-pleaser" persona takes over so much that when that mask is down for even a moment everyone wonders what the hell is wrong - or you go from "everybody loves me" to "everyone thinks I'm a bitch". I get Lila, I really do.... even the "I'm a flirt and don't realize it, I just think I'm being friendly".... so I want to write a Lila story so people can truly get people like us. Lila, I might HATE you for messing with Arnold's feelings and for being in Helga's way.... but I GET YOU, sista! *fist bump*
7. Another one where I don't really know the plot, but I know who I REALLY want to write about. It's another misunderstood character who is a lot like me: Olga Pataki.
   Olga is the older sister who just tries her best to make her parents proud, and along the way, has put the pressure to be perfect on herself without realizing it. She's the older sister to a rebellious girl who seems cranky all the time and can't stand the older sibling for whatever reason. My younger sister is also very artistically talented, but won't let anyone really see. Olga and I both don't understand how we could offend our kid sister so much, how our attempts to bond just seem to push the sister farther away, and we both get along with our sisters sooooo much better when not living under the same roof. Although I KNOW my mom doesn't have favorites, since I'm the one who stays out of trouble and my mom and I bond to the point of being best friends - whereas my sister butts heads with our mom - Olga and I are also similar in the fact that we're the "good daughter". Our mom also confuses us sometimes - but that's usually when I'm being a pain in the butt, and my mom calls me my sister's name by mistake since I remind my mom of my sister at that point. The line is usually "YOU KNOW WHICH ONE YOU ARE!!!!!" LOL.... Mom.... :D
   Anyway, my point is that I want to write an Olga-centric story once, about the pains of being an older sister, desperately trying to bond with a younger sibling that was the greatest gift the parents can give, and waiting patiently for the day that the younger sister will openly try to bond. I have hopes for Olga and Helga. My sister and I are only five years apart and so we're both in our 20s. It kept us until I moved away after marriage for my sister and I to bond - over football no less.... Perhaps once Helga is in a "happy place" her and Olga can finally connect.

And there you have it! I thought I had more bouncing around in there, but here are my plot bunnies! YAY! Leave a comment below and let me know what you think of them, which one I should nourish first, and if you'd like to pick any up for adoption.