Learning to Love (Writing) Again

Est. Read Time: 15min
This Month's Font: Pangolin

Surprising probably everyone - including myself - I actually did some (tangential) writing this month!

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Granted, I haven't actually written anything narratively.... but I HAVE been thinking REEEEEAAAALLLY HARD about my WIPs. That counts, right?

As I mentioned in my LRRC update, I had distracted myself by building a new Discord server. Aurora Morgen had really been grinding away at nir original story lately. Nearly daily, ne would send me a new message about a new idea for nir novel. I thought that maybe it would be easier to keep all of those conversations together on a server than it was trying to re-find them when interspersed throughout our DMs. I also thought that maybe having more eyes on this project could be of some extra help. So I included our mutual friend Dragnime and his wife. Then, as I thought more about this new server, I realized, "I really just miss having a writing group!" Naturally, that lead me to invite two of my friends from my former writing group (that unfortunately disbanded with the 2020 shutdowns). Now there's five people on this little baby server (Dragnime's wife hasn't joined yet).

Aurora is still mostly hammering out the details for nir story in our DM's. Prior to yesterday, Dragnime had posted a couple of things, but was originally relatively silent. The two writing group friends said "hi" in the generic greeting channel, but haven't really interacted more than that. Me, on the other hand? Oh, I've been utilizing the crap out of this new server. Might as well, right? I built the dang thing!

I have massively infodumped on this server! I spent a couple of days just giving bios for each of my OCs. Did you know I have 18 of them!? Because I sure as heck didn't until I started posting about them on Discord! That doesn't even include my Scum & Villainy NPCs such as Mevakor or Maggie or my fleshing out of Banshee the pirate queen. I also didn't include my original reworks of canonical X-Men characters for my conversion of X-Future into Glitches. Or any of Jolene's "Lost Loves and Paramours"... that's another 11 characters right there (a full dozen if you count me reworking Rensin into an original character). Good gravy, I'd easily have over 3-dozen OCs if I went that in-depth!

So, who did make the cut?

1. Lia
2. Willow
3. Trish
4. Shawn (Willow's brother)
5. Amara
6. Jolene
7. Kriv
8. Emerald Gaze
9. Arianna Snow (nee Pamela Sheppard) - an old D&D character and inspiration for my Tumblr blog title
10. Elymoxa
11. Aubrianne
12. Natalie
13. Connor
14. Colton
15. Zetelica
16. Artie
17. Anna-Marie
18. Jynna

Some of those are SUCH blasts from the past, aren't they? For you long-time readers, do you remember who all of them are?!

I also use Spotify playlists like they're Pinterest boards. I have five different ones dedicated to either individual stories - such as Seduce with Caution or I Don't Care - or dedicated to just a single character - such as Jolene or Trish. (The fifth playlist is for generic X-Future "vibes"). You best believe that I shared all five of these playlists on my Discord server. I also included my Google Doc explaining exactly why I picked the songs I did for Jolene's playlist, why they are in the order that they are, and what part of her narrative each song is supposed to represent. Like I said, musical Pinterest boards....

Since Dragnime did start sharing his world building ideas, I had decided to do the same. I linked to the two stories I had up on Fiction Press that talked about my build of Gyateara (which I haven't really touched since 2014!):

• The Divine Legends
• The People of Gyateara

If all that isn't enough, the other day I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I dove back into S&V and my list of original alien builds. That's how I spent most of my downtime at work. Just... sat with my Google Docs list of 11 original alien ideas, complete with physical descriptions of them and some cultural breakdowns. The doc is nearly 30 pages long! I mean, it's a bulleted list with images included, but... still...

That document also reminded me of the struggles I've had in trying to sort out how to actually share all of my Glitches and Scum & Villainy world builds. I want to do a sort of fandom wiki, but I can't seem to figure out how to do so for original content, and everyone hates the actual Fandom site anyway.... I tried using World Anvil instead, and I've enjoyed using it. However, I quickly hit my limit of free articles, and I can't afford to pay the subscription fee to keep going on World Anvil.

If any of you can help me out with building these two fandom wikis, please let me know!

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One of the bigger posts I shared to the server - outside of my massive OC list - was about my plot bunny ideas. It's not even all of them. Admittedly, I've kind of moved on from about 5 ideas since I last posted about my plunnies back in 2022. Even so, I ended up with eight ML fanfic plot bunnies. The ones that survived the "I'm over it" ax are:

1. Non-magic game streamer AU
• This is probably my frontrunner of new ideas I want to develop
2. The PV of ML (Felix as Chat Noir and Bridgette as Ladybug) co-exists with canon
• Obviously ignoring season 5, so no sentibeing shenanigans and Felix isn't romantically attached to Kagami
3. Adrien is in need of a fake girlfriend, and decides on Marinette
4. Rewrite of canon so that Gabriel is actually a decent father who loves his son
• Especially since the Agreste Saga is over, I really do want to work on this. I'd have to sort out how to handle the whole sentibeings BS though....
5. Adrien tries out the concept that “if you want the truth, ask the same question 3x” on both Ladybug and Marinette, to surprising results.
6. Another retelling of the 12th chapter of Remember That Time When... by MostLovedGirl. This time focusing more on Adrien’s isolation after Marinette literally locked herself away from him.
7. Adrien discovers that Ladybug is Marinette, and tries to figure out who this boy is that she’s in love with
     7b. Adrien finds out HE’S the boy that Ladybug keeps turning Chat Noir down for
• May or may not be a separate story from the above plot bunny
8. Master Fu backstory filling in the time between the fall of the monastery and when we meet him in Origins. Mostly focusing on the 1940s and WWII.
• Probably the one I'm the least interested in still....

Beyond those 8 fanfic ideas, I've also had an original isekai story living rent-free in my head for about two weeks now. I mean, given the number of romance isekai/transmigration/portal fantasy stories I've been consuming lately, paired with all of the isekais my husband had been watching the last couple of months, I'm surprised it kept me this long to come up with an isekai concept myself.

This specific idea was the spawn of "romance isekai" and "multiple people are isekai'd into the same world but might not realize they aren't the only one". With regards to the manhwa I read, I'm thinking like I Will Live the Life of a Villainess, where both the female and male leads were isekai'd into the same story, but weren't originally aware of that fact. Thankfully, they realized fairly quickly that there was someone else in this fantasy setting that was from modern-day South Korea. Also, one of stories I started reading a little while ago, Divorcing My Tyrant Husband, has both the female lead and her romantic rival isekai'd from modern-day Korea. The rival - Aisha - has no clue that the female lead - Robellia - is also from another world. Finally, there's At Your Mercy. Granted, this time only one person appears to have been isekai'd, but this is the second time it's happened to her, and she's transmigrated into the same story as a different character. The male lead/romantic interest is starting to realize that these seemingly two different people are actually one-and-the-same - in a spiritual sense - because they have the same telling ticks and mannerisms. 

On my husband's side of things, he started watching So I'm a Spider, So What? In that, an entire classroom died together in an explosion and reincarnated in this new fantasy world. At first, the classmates didn't realize they weren't the only one to get isekai'd. Once they realized they weren't alone, they also discovered that it was the whole class that was reincarnated. They just didn't necessarily know who in this new world was a reincarnation of their former teacher or classmates. They also weren't necessarily reincarnated in a way that was easy for them to find each other. The one classmate was reincarnated as the titular spider, for instance. Since spiders mature faster than humans, she was basically an adult with kids of her own by the time she finally meets up with her former classmates; all still teens.

Anyway, all of those ideas blended together in my head to come up with this isekai concept:

A loving, devoted, happy couple dies together, but, perhaps it's so sudden that they don't realize they died. They are then isekai'd to the same new world. Maybe it's more of the South Korean "transmigration" style where they possess a teen/adult already in that world and take over from that moment on. Either way, neither member of the couple knows that their partner was transmigrated with them. They are nowhere near each other when they wake up in their new bodies.

But... red string of fate and all that... they manage to still gravitate to each other somehow. They both, however, are still wondering if it's possible to return to Earth and their loving spouse (not realizing their spouse is no longer on Earth either). They can't give up on their spouse. They are actively ignoring the tingly feelings they are having whenever they are around their reincarnated spouse because they have no clue, and falling for this "new" person feels like a betrayal still.

But!

There's these little mannerisms. These flashes of their old lives/personality trickling into their new body, and their spouse notices. "Am I just projecting?" the spouse wonders. "Am I falling for this person because they remind me so much of my love?" It doesn't even occur to them for the longest time that maybe their spouse was isekai'd with them.

They continue to dance around each other in a slow-burn romance before SOMETHING happens where they both instantly realize "Oh, shit! We're both from Earth! Does- does that mean you're who I THINK you are????"

Huzzah! They have re-discovered each other! Obviously, other exterior drama would be mixed in, but, hey, at least they are reunited in this new life!

I have no clue where to go with this concept, but I just can't stop thinking about it. Would I be able to recognize my husband if he were in a different body? Would he recognize me? Would we be able to find each other and fall in love again? We claimed as much in our vows, but it would be interesting to see if it were as true as we'd like to believe. 

One of the bigger questions I have to figure out is: what kind of exterior drama would there be that would continue to tug at this romance? For I Will Live the Life of a Villainess, there's the power struggle for the crown between the isekai'd male lead and his younger brother. Meanwhile, the isekai'd female lead is trying to survive the execution her character originally suffered, all while battling against a potential third isekai'd character. In Divorcing My Tyrant Husband, very much the same thing: Robellia just wants to survive the death the character suffered in the original novel, but, in her attempt to survive, she is unintentionally undermining Aisha and making her a bigger enemy. For At Your Mercy, the female lead is trying to sort out the mysteries of (1) how did she return to Earth from her original transmigration, (2) how did the character she first possessed end up dying, (3) why/how is she isekai'd a second time into the same story, and (4) can she recover the poor reputation this second character she possessed has without raising suspicion of the character's possession? In So I'm A Spider, So What?, there's the political pull of the secondary main character banding his former classmates together when said classmates and their teacher and the classmate who reincarnated as a spider all got reincarnated into opposing factions. Also, the lead was reincarnated as a spider in a magical world where people indiscriminately kill all monsters. She has to figure out how to survive! 

Soooooo, yeah.... what kind of external drama should be going on that would cause the leads' lives to be rough even after they refind their true love? Also, would my knowledge of regency-era hierarchies via the isekais I consume be enough, or would I have to do some research? What would be the tells each lead would show that would hint to each other that this person was once their spouse? What would cause them to finally feel safe enough to confirm it?

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Soooooo yeah! That's more-or-less the extent of my writing this month: updating my blog, helping Aurora with nir story, creating that writing group Discord server, and re-connecting with all of my OCs, WIPs, and plot bunnies as I infodump about them on the server.

It is nice to think about OCs again and talk about world builds for stories like Glitches or Blame Fate for This or Gyateara in general.

Now, to actually write something new..... It's been 8 months since I've published any new stories. Ooof. 

I just can't seem to lock in on anything that I want to narrate quite yet. I've been consuming content by the gallons in an attempt to spark ANYTHING. While posting to that Discord server has helped respark my desire to create, it also just had me dive back into character-/world-building. Nothing story wise. As for stories to tell, I'm still tapped dry.

In the meantime, at least I'm still - surprisingly - getting those AO3 emails letting me know that my stories are still receiving kudos. I do still have to squint at a lot of those kudos notifications; still unsure if they're actual people or just bots... especially all of the "guest" kudos that don't include a comment with them. For the most part, however, they warm my heart. And surprise me a bit.

While the kudos have more-or-less fallen off for I Think I Like You (Maybe More Than I Should) - which I fully expected, as an almost year-old ML fanfic - the kudos are still semi-regularly coming in for the even older You Pretended Not to Care! I even got a new comment on it!

What am I going to do with you, Edith Rudwick?

Edith and Killian are the formula of STRANGERS TO LOVERS!!! The author was cooking and they COOKED.

But this Fic! I needed this. I love this. It gives me the mind of Killian and you [censored] COOKED!!!
Sizzling and tasty.

10/10

EEEEEEEEEE!!! Totally awesome! Right? The better YPNTC continues to do the more I truly believe that my downfall is simply being in the bloated Miraculous Ladybug fandom. That, and the fact that my stories aren't all fanon "What If..." AU rewrites: What if Chloe got the Ladybug Miraculous instead of Marinette? What if Adrien allied with his father and Ladybug had to battle Chat Noir along with Hawk Moth (and maybe Mayura)? What if Adrien and/or Marinette were transgender or some other queer character? What if Adrien and/or Marinette were an amputee after a near-death accident/attack? What if the story followed Felix instead of Marinette and Adrien? What if Fantasy AU? What if Coffee House AU? What if No Magic AU? What if Adrien and Marinette grew apart but then reunited in their 20s? What if they believed the other one had died? What if Marinette and Adrien never met each other outside of their superhero personas when they were teens? What if Batman and his legion of kids existed in the same universe, and Marinette fell in love with one of the Robins instead?

You get the idea.

It feels like the biggest stories in the fandom are all "What If...?" AU stories.... And I'm over here writing slightly canon non-conforming content.... is that my issue? Or is it because I don't publish something new just about weekly? I'm still trying to figure out why I'm just so obscure in the ML fandom.

To be fully frank, both being virtually invisible in the ML fandom, and also failing to garner much attention in my non-ML fics because they're in dying/dead fandoms hasn't really helped much with my writing confidence. Adding some salt to the wound, as exciting as it is to talk to fellow writers again via my Discord server, there's also not much.... interaction there either. Dragnime and I are each posting about our own stories, but virtually no one is commenting on other people's stuff. It still feels like pulling teeth to get anyone to read my content.

Actually... it feels more like I'm trying to force-feed my content....

Scene from Disney's Aladdin
Edited into a meme by LycoRogue

Ooof. I'm going down a dark path. Let's jump back off of that real quick!

Instead, how about we focus on this month's positive. A blessing to reflect back on at the end of the year.

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Honestly, I think I've already told you all of my February "Good News"/blessings/positive vibes... whatever you want to call it.

I'm going back through my old WIP and plot bunnies lists. I went through my OCs and remembered some I haven't thought of in years. I looked back at my Gyateara world-build. I revisited my alien builds for S&V. I'm getting excited about writing again. I had a horrid close to my work day yesterday, but still delighted in the realization that it helped me think of a potential akuma idea for one of my ML fanfics. (Now to think of a name for a raging Godzilla-like monster born from a customer service worker snapping...)

I'm also taking pride that *I* did that! It wasn't some outside force. I was the one who decided to create this server. I was the one who decided it was time to talk about my writing again. I was the one who paused and reread through my old work. I was the one who jumpstarted my own love for my writing, and writing in general.

Plus, that awesome review on You Pretended Not to Care didn't hurt. While - as I mentioned - it feels like I'm struggling to force-feed my content onto ANYONE just so it's read and I can talk about it WITH people (as opposed to AT people), whenever YPNTC gets any love I feel like I could maybe relax a bit. That maybe my writing IS good enough that people WANT to read it. That I don't have to corner people with my stories going, "Did you read it yet? How about now? How about now? NOW????" People found my stuff all on their own. They took time out of their day to read it. They enjoyed it enough to leave some love. That's super cool. And each one of those kudos and comments is an inch of rope I can use to climb back out of this pit of self-doubt.

Thank you, dear readers. Love you all loads!

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Now to ride this high into actually writing something! Maybe I'll have actual advancement in any of my WIPs when I publish my March update. In the meantime, I'll catch you around the Ides of March for my next update of LycoRogue's Reading Corner.

Hopefully you can put down your daggers long enough for a nice read.