Showing posts with label Original Akuma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Original Akuma. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Overly Analytical Creative

Well, Camp NaNo ended not in a bang, but with quite the whimper... I will say this though, I did better than my April attempt at Camp. That month I only managed 8600+ words for "One and the Same." At least this time I didn't wave the white flag until after I hit 17,664 words. So there's that. However, the last time I had added something new to the story was on the 26th. So, this is my Camp NaNo finished July chart...
A previously sold (read: old) word count tracker for Camp NaNoWriMo
Designed by Miss Write
You can find other amazing (and really cheap!) trackers,
calendars, and planner stickers on her etsy: WriteMissWrite
It hurts a little. It wasn't for lack of trying, but I just wasn't sure where I was going with the story anymore. I COULD have just worried about that word count and just spewed words onto paper - er... screen, actually... - but it just would have felt like a waste of time. Both because I spent that time writing something that was going to get cut later instead of figuring out my story, and because it would have taken so much time to weed through that "spewed" writing instead of using that time to actually continue my tale.

So, I decided to not waste that time and try to plan. And plan. And plan some more.

Planning is hard when you're a Pantser at heart... especially when you are someone like me, who way overthinks everything. Ironic, no? Someone who overthinks everything also have a hard time planning things? Well, you guys should know by now what I say about me and Irony.

I am surprisingly analytical for a creative person. It's one of the reasons I actually haven't gotten that far in any original writing. I'm too busy poking holes in my stories - so that my readers won't be able to - that I don't leave enough time to plug up said holes, and until I do, I don't feel comfortable writing.

I stopped working on "The Race for Destiny" for a few reasons - one being that terrible working title - but the main reason was because my male lead Connor stormed out, and I can't figure out how to pull him back into the story, or rewrite that scene so he WON'T storm out. I really should get back to that story at some point...

I've been paused on my other Gyateara original stories because I haven't figured out the world-build yet. I want to make sure the main pitfalls of fantasy writing other authors fall into - unrealistic geography, unrealistic population density, undeveloped culture for the fantasy world, and being a Tolkien/D&D world rip-off - don't happen with my world or story. I keep finding things wrong with my world, though, even if it might not affect, and therefore ever come up in, any of my intended stories for the world.

Finally, I've been stuck with "Glitches" because I'm still trying to rework the story elements so it's not a direct rip-off of the X-Men comics. Although, I keep wondering more and more if that's really as big of an issue as I think it is.

"The Boys" just came out on Amazon Prime, and the power-crazed, unchecked superheroes in this gritty and bloody show are pretty obvious rip-offs of a lot of DC's The Justice League heroes, such as Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Superman, and Aquaman. That's solely based on the costume choices I've seen in promos. I don't have Amazon Prime, so I haven't watched it... Point is, they don't seem to care that they are directly ripping off famous superheroes. At the same time, though, "The Boys" is a satire of the superhero genre, so it is probably by design that the out of control heroes in that series are parodies of the well known superheroes, but with their morality skewed.

Going in a "this isn't supposed to relate to existing superhero media" direction, there's the manga and anime "My Hero Academia", where the main character goes to a prestigious school designed to train superpowered people to become superheroes. In the world of My Hero, the vast majority of the human population is now born with some sort of mutation and/or power - called a "quirk" in the series. Due to insurance and collateral damage concerns, all superheroes must be licensed and part of a "sponsored team" - basically, they have to be hired by a company in order to be a superhero instead of simply a vigilante. One could of course draw parallels between the main class of My Hero and the teenage classes of X-Men throughout the years, and more parallels between the League of Villains and The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and even more parallels between the ideologies of All Might vs All For One and Professor Xavier vs Magneto, and the idea of UA High School paralleling the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. However, the similarities between the two franchises is passing, at best.

Perhaps I only see how closely "Glitches" relates to X-Men because I know X-Men was the inspiring source material? Again, maybe my overthinking makes me see problems that no one else would, which ends up delaying my overall writing.

Which brings me back to Camp NaNo and "One and the Same."

My hold-up this time is trying to come up with the akumas for the story. I have my initial one that starts off the whole tale: Headliner. I STILL need to figure out how Ladybug and Chat Noir defeat her, though, and I just can't seem to think outside of the box enough to come up with a solution using a Lucky Charm. She's the least of my worries, however.

The story of “Peeping Tomcat” takes place over the course of twelve days, and, to make it feel more true-to-show, I wanted to make sure there weren't too many days in between akuma attacks. Aside from some "off-screen" akumas - as they were - during the week that Chat Noir was spying on Marinette, I had three akuma attacks showcased in that story. As for "One and the Same"? Well, I still don't have a concrete timeline figured out, which is part of the problem, but I do know it will be roughly a month-long story. I know for a fact that I have scenes spanning at least 16 days, and once I add on the closing scenes, I'm going to be at least at 21 days, if not that full 30 for a month.

Just for plot purposes alone - Headliner sets up the world and is the catalyst for Adrien to wonder how much the events of PT truly affect them - I have a total of three showcased akuma attacks that need to happen, and a fourth that at least needs to conclude within the narrative of the story for another plot point. Considering how many days pass throughout my story, though, I might need to sprinkle in some other akuma attacks in order to work in more LadyNoir moments, but I'm not positive on that yet.

My point is that I tried concluding Camp NaNo a series of different ways to try to help me get back on track. I tried re-reading some of my earlier written scenes in order to remember what was and wasn't already stated. That ended up making me do a full-stop on writing my already epically-long concluding chapters because I WAS rambling and repeating things stated earlier in the story. I then figured I needed a better grip on the outline so I could focus more on where to go with the story. I was still lost on the timeline and what needed to go where in order to bounce POV between Marinette and Adrien every other chapter, so I then worked on a chapter breakdown... That... didn't go terribly well as I still wasn't sure what to do with most of my second act.



I think I need to weed out some of those chapters, merge others, and file down my overall story, because PT was only 17 chapters long, and it was STILL over 84,000 words. Based on the count I have in that spoiler box, I'm looking at at LEAST 25 chapters, although it's probably going to be closer to 30. That would be fine if I was dealing with smaller chapters, but they don't seem to be all that smaller for OatS. In fact, here's the word count of the chapters I have thus far!
  • Chapter 1: 4743 words for a mostly polished and complete chapter
  • Chapter 2: 2620 words for an incomplete chapter that still needs the akuma defeated
  • Chapter 3: 4780 words for an incomplete chapter that needs a major overhaul
  • Chapter 4: 5260 words for a mostly polished and complete chapter
  • Chapter 6: 3063 words for a first draft of a chapter... I'll get back to this one...
  • Chapter 9: 4020 words for a chapter that still needs an opening
  • Chapter 12: 5239 words for a mostly polished and complete chapter
  • Chapter 13: 1894 words for the first draft of a chapter
  • Chapter 14: 1587 words for the middle bits of this incomplete chapter
  • Chapter this-is-the-start-of-Act-III: 1386 words in a dialogue-only chapter that needs action added in
  • Chapter Lead-In to Finale: 2401 words for a chapter that still needs an opening
  • Chapter Finale Part 1: 5701 words that I'll have to rework
  • Chapter Finale Part 2: 4252 words that I'll have to rework
  • Chapter Finale Part 3: 3742 words for an incomplete chapter I need to rework anyway
This breakdown doesn't include the random mini-scenes I'd like to have within the story, but I'm not sure what chapters they each belong in. It's also only about half of the chapters I think I'll need to tell my full story. A year after starting this project, and this is as far as I am...
Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

My point truly being though that I'm MAYBE half way through my overall story. Most of those chapters aren't even completed, I have mini-scenes I didn't include in the above counts, and yet I'm STILL at 50, 688 words! If I had managed to write all of this in ONE MONTH, I would have won NaNo! Let me say that again. My story, which, after a year of work, is MAYBE at about 46% completion, is already at FIFTY-THOUSAND SIX-HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHT words! Assuming my estimate of my story being 46% complete is accurate, that means this sequel to my 84,000-word story will be roughly 110-thousand words long!
Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.
 Dear. Lord.

I really wasn't kidding when I commented last week that everything I write becomes an epic. Heck! Even this post is hitting epic proportions again.

Sooooooo, yeah, trying to figure out my story, where to go with it, the outline, and a chapter breakdown to organize the outline a bit better all took up most of those closing 5 days of Camp NaNo. The final two days, however, I focused on figuring out those akumas. If I couldn't sort through the actual drama of the story, maybe I could at least come up with the akuma attacks.

Bad choice. I am complete trash when it comes to thinking up these akumas. I had sent Taurus Pixie a list of five akuma designs I had thought up, simply in order to vent at how none of them are complete enough to use. Poor thing tried to find a polite way of telling me "you way overthink" as she struggled to help me figure out any of them.

God bless! I did let her know that I wasn't asking for help; simply to vent.

Anyway, for the akuma villains I sent to Pixie, one was based on the character Cyrano de Bergerac, but I don't have much figured out by means of his attack, his end goal, how LB and CN will defeat him, or even a firm handle on the instigating event that caused him to become akumatized in the first place. I have another one where the villain can change at will - much like previous akumas: Pharaoh, Animan, and Animaestro - between the different classic Hollywood monsters: Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy, Dracula, Wolfman, Invisible Man, etc. That's all I have of that villain though, a vague concept of being able to transform between classic monsters. A third villain is one of the first I ever designed. This lovely lady: Vocalizer.
Image generated using
Candy World's X-Girl doll maker
Originally, she had a sonic voice much like the comic book characters Canary from DC, and Banshee and his daughter Siryn from Marvel. I couldn't figure out how to use that power best without it seeming like a rehash of the ML canon akuma Guitar Villain, so I switched up her powers a bit so her song is more "bardic" in nature: manipulating emotions. I haven't quite figured out her inciting incident yet, or her endgame goal, or how LB and CN would stop her.

Another "almost but not quite done" akumatized villain idea was The Masketeer - because Hawk Moth loves his puns... - a mask craftsman who takes on a musketeer appearance as he mind controls citizens by fusing one of his masks to their faces. I also pictured him with a lot of elements similar to Hexadecimal from ReBoot. Mainly, her porcelain mask that changes expressions with a hand wave:
Like the others, I still have to solidify his inciting incident, his endgame, and how LB and CN would defeat him.

Hitting a bit of a brick wall, and noticing that there are canon akuma villains that could be watered-down versions of Spider-Man villains - such as Volpina being Mysterio, Chameleon being... well... Chameleon, Weredad being Man-Wolf, Troublemaker being Will o' the Wisp, Queen Wasp having control over bees like Swarm, Lady Wifi focusing on livestreaming her attack like Screwball, Reverser having a very Green Goblin/Hobgoblin feel with his glider and throwing paper airplanes, MMA fighter Anansi having similar traits to Black Tarantula and the concept of 6-armed Spider-Man, and Animan possibly being a nod to Kraven the Hunter - I turned to more of Spider-Man's rogues gallery to try to find inspiration.

It didn't work, but I then remembered that Ladybug was loosely based off both Spider-Man and Sailor Moon. So I tried Sailor Moon villains instead. I instantly thought of an acrobat throwing juggling balls at our superhero duo. From there, I thought of the Dead Moon Circus - called Dark Moon Circus in early English dubs - and the Amazoness Quartet. Again thinking of Hawk Moth's penchant for puns, I made the villains a trio with the gimmick of sharing an acrobatic balance ball between the three of them, and called them the Grey Sisters... ya know, like the Greek myth of three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them? I even had the sisters' names spell out GREY: Gemma-Renee, Esmee, and Yvette. Because I wasn't heavy-handed enough with the naming, I also gave the sisters the last name Grise, which is the feminine French translation of the word gray. At least, according to Google Translate...

The more I worked on this trio the more I realized two things:
  1. They were becoming way too much for a simple chapter in my main story and thus they needed their own story where they're the main villain - like a episodic villain
  2. I STILL was having problems trying to figure out how LB and CN would defeat them, and I also wasn't sure how the acrobatic balance ball was really going to factor in practically... 
Like I said before, TaurusPixie pinpointed my problem when she told me I overthink my akumatized villains. In contrast - and also kind of as proof of my overthinking tendencies - an unwell Pixie was able to just glance around her bedroom, see a book on her shelf, and come up with a fairy tale themed villain that traps LB and CN in stories they have to act out in order to dispel them and get closer to the Villain of the Week.

Four days later and I STILL can't come up with something that awesome just on the fly by looking around the room. I have no clue how she does it! How does the Miraculous Ladybug writing team do it roughly 26 times per season!? No wonder they're beginning to reuse older villains, but giving them a new take on their powers.

Hmmm.... maybe I can do that....

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Knowing I was going to just save my Grey Sisters akuma villain(s) for their own ML story anyway, I shelved the project for now. Leaving me back at zero: no new akuma ideas, no finished off akuma ideas, and no further progress on OatS.

This trek towards figuring out new akuma attacks took me right up until Sunday. Waving the white flag on that train of thought, I went back to writing. After going through my notes on the outline dozens of times, I managed to get re-inspired on another chapter: chapter 6 of my story, as the outline falls right now.

The chapter is mostly to ease reader's minds as to "how is all this MariChat stuff going to work without them getting caught?" I just need to go back and make sure it's also in the story because it moves the overall progress forward. I have the bare bones written up - 3063; "bare bones" indeed... - I just need to go back and polish a few things. I also need to add in a conclusion to the chapter that will make the whole thing worth the reader's time. Something that gives the "which caused" to the story.

I need to track down where I found that bit of advice, but it was talking about the difference between good page-turning stories and lack-luster ones. I think it was a webinar, actually... where DID those notes go? Anyway, the key element to good stories, as laid out in this advice, is that each scene causes the next one. The final scene of the movie/book wouldn't happen without the one before it, and that one wouldn't happen without the one before it. So scene A - the inciting incident - causes scene B to happen, which causes scene C to happen, which causes scene D... so on and so forth. As opposed to the "and then" storytelling. "This thing happened, and then this thing happened, and then this thing happened." Each of those could be unrelated.

For instance, if I were to tell you that today I woke up, and then I took my husband to work, and then I started working on this blog, and then I stopped to have a quick breakfast, and then I went back to working on this blog. None of those actions caused any of the other ones, ignoring the "inciting incident" of waking up, of course. Regardless of if I took my husband to work, I would have still written my blog today because it's Tuesday. I could have gone all morning without eating, or I could have eaten something quick before writing my blog. The order doesn't matter. As such, I'm sure that list of activities I did today wasn't that entertaining of a story.

The Hunger Games, on the other hand, has that causality to it. There was once a rebellion, which caused the winning republic to create the Hunger Games in the first place, which resulted in the inciting incident of Primrose being picked to fight in the Hunger Games, which caused her older sister Katniss to volunteer to take her place, which caused Katniss to learn how to win, which caused her to try to "play nice" in order to get sponsors, which caused her to become even more pissed off at the whole spectacle of the thing, which caused her to stand out as the spunky teen who refused to play by the rules, which led her to become a crowd favorite, which allowed her to survive via sponsor gifts and made her an ally of weaker and more passive players like Rue, which leads to Rue's district jointly sponsoring Katniss - as well as starting the new revolution - when Katniss avenges Rue's death. The story continues with all of those A causes B causes C resulting in D which causes E, etc storytelling. I'm sure that is more enticing to continue reading. Right?

So, back to my point, I need to make sure my story has that same level of causality. I know for the most part that certain chapters cause others, which is why previous chapters, as much of a headache they may be, must be there.

Chapter one leads directly to chapter two, which causes the reflection in the back half of chapter two. This leads to actions in chapter three that results in the meet-up in chapter four that starts the whole MariChat dynamic that makes up the core of this story. The akuma attack in chapter 5 results in more reflection that causes chapter 6, and I just need to make sure chapter 6 leads somewhere as well. Further on, an important meeting for Marinette leads to a semi-crucial chapter late in Act II, which leads to Marinette potentially seeing Adrien differently, and definitely has Adrien view her differently. Fast forward to Act III, and one chapter leads to a poor reaction on Marinette's part, which leads to the next chapter, where Adrien gets angry with her, which leads to the next chapter's main turning point in the whole story, this then leads to the climactic confrontation between the two characters.... which I've dragged out for three chapters....
 
Then I have the ending chapter, resulting from the conclusion of the climax.

So, I have that skeleton of causality... my biggest issue is that I can't figure out the "because, which causes" that ties the other chapters together, and I have a few chapters in there that are there just "because they need to be?" but aren't necessarily caused by anything leading into it or causes anything that follows.

But, hey! I did write SOMETHING this past week! I did write that one "does this go anywhere?" chapter. I did write those 3000+ words. That's... good... right?

Well, this weekend, I also watched the "cringe episode" - as the fandom calls it - in English with Wolfhearted. Poor guy probably has a bruise on his already sunburnt arm as I smacked him instead of Adrien, Nino, and Marinette during my watch of "Puppeteer 2." I then talked about the episode a touch with TaurusPixie, and in doing so I truly raged about the fact that Tikki and Plagg know who Ladybug and Chat Noir are, and yet they let that mess of an episode happen!

In turn - see? causality! - I thought about that episode through the perspective of Tikki, and how much it actually must have hurt her to just let things play out due to her inability to let Marinette and Adrien know who the other truly is.

I quickly wished Pixie a farewell on Facebook as I raced off to write!

Well... "raced" isn't the right word. I slept REALLY wrong Sunday into Monday, and I could barely move my shoulders, upper back, and neck yesterday. So I more or less shuffled to the front porch, hoping the warmth and sun will help relax my muscles, and typed away for about two hours. Regardless of how quickly I moved to do so, I still wrote another 2300 words yesterday.

Why is it I can write more than 2000 words two days in a row NOW? Meh, anyway, if you want to check out my take on Tikki's perspective of "Puppeteer 2" you can find it in my normal spots. Be warned, it obviously is filled with episode spoilers since it's a companion story.

"Painfully Close"

There is a Tumblr blog that I started following about a month ago called ao3feed-LadyNoir. It may have, at one time, focused solely on promoting LadyNoir fics uploaded to AO3, but now it seems fairly indiscriminate. From what I can tell, any and all stories that include the Love Square ship, and is posted to AO3, FFN, or Wattpad seems to be fair game. The person(s) that runs the blog doesn't simply promote stories they think are good, but will boost any story that is uploaded.

Since I've been TRYING to stay off of Tumblr so frequently, I never really noticed when this blog updates. I figured it was two or three times a day. They would round up any new fics, or updated fics, and boost them. Well, either I hit the "magical hour" when the blog does this, or they actually get alerts, because they promoted my story within a half-hour of me posting it!

Much like my own promotion, theirs doesn't seem to have reached too many people. On the other hand, I have read a few stories that the blog suggested, but I've neglected to go back to Tumblr in order to like and/or reblog their boost of it. I need to do that in order to help promote stories I enjoy...

Anyway, my point is, more people could have seen the post than I realize. Also, regardless of how many people saw the post, I did have five people like their promo of my story, and one of those people proceeded to then follow my Tumblr. I've also had a nice influx of people on AO3, and it could very well have been thanks to this blog.

So, thank you, ao3feed-LadyNoir! I really appreciate you existing to help boost Love Square stories like that.

Speaking of, how about some stats? I'm a bit beyond 24-hrs now, but let's see what I got.
FFN: 258 views, 9 faves, 9 followers, and 1 review by the awesome ChubbyUnicornMama
AO3: 310 views, 40 kudos, 1 bookmark, and 1 comment
DA: 18 views, 1 fave, but no comments

Total Results: 586 views, 50 faves, 10 followers/bookmarks, and 2 reviews

Tumblr Notes:
- My Promo: 7 notes; 5 likes and 2 reblogs
- AO3feed's Promo: 5 likes

FFN Review:
  1. I love the Tikki perspective! And, much like Tikki, I think we were all yelling at Adrien not to interrupt Marinette as she tried to get her actual confession out! *bangs head against wall* Great story, though!

AO3 Review:
  1. Tikki's constantly watching a soap opera. I love it.
Now, a quick disclaimer about my Tumblr promo. First, I posted a promo for the story, listing the normal three locations to find it: AO3, FFN, and DA. Then, a few hours later, I went back and reblogged that promo, but included the full story in the reblog, in case people preferred to read on Tumblr. The trick there though is that Tumblr has no way of distinguishing these two versions of the post when tallying those notes. So I don't know if the fourth and/or fifth likes, which came after my reblog, were for the promo as it was, or if the likes were for the full-story reblog. I'll have to switch up my tactics next time...

Also, two of the likes on the AO3feed promo were accounts who also liked my promo, so that actually drops my overall likes to 8.

I would also like to note that one of the people who left me kudos on "Painfully Close" also left me kudos on "Acting Weird." I don't know if they found me through the Tumblr promos; if they started with PC and went to AW, or the other way around; or if they had always been a reader, and I just never noticed them before. However, it's cool to see repeat-readers of my stuff.

Speaking of repeat-readers, it seems "Painfully Close" was good enough to entice two new people on FFN to favorite and bookmark the story, as well as favorite and subscribe to me as an author! Awesome!

Final note with regards to my writings: I made some awesome acquaintances at my Camp NaNo cabin! One of them - who went by Many-Eyed Katsu at Camp, but goes by DontTrustLoserCandy on AO3 - actually left me a kudos on "Woven Heartstrings." That story is over 32,000-words long! It's a novella! As far as I can tell - from our discussions in the Cabin, as well as based on the bookmarks they have on AO3 - DontTrustLoserCandy isn't in the ML fandom. However, they still took all that time to read one of my stories.
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I find such awesome writing buddies!

SPEAKING OF AWESOME WRITING BUDDIES!!!

TAURUS PIXIE!

While I was finishing up writing, editing/polishing up, and posting "Painfully Close", she was doing the same for A GIFT FOR ME! Back in April, for Pixie's birthday, I wrote her the Lukanette story "I Was Thinking Of You." Well, turnabout's fair play, so naturally she had to "torture" me as well with her own Lukanette story for MY birthday!

So, please, go check out her story for me:

"A Frozen Moment"

Maki Natsuo from Love Lab
created by Ruri Miyahara
Pixie, you are such Awesome Sauce!

I love my creative friends who gift me one-of-a-kind things like this and ChibiSunnie's annual personalized birthday cards!
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Now to get my own creative butt in gear. Tonight I'm doing character creation for a 5e D&D game, so maybe that will help me get the creative juices flowing again.
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Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Welcome to Camp

Hey, guys. Are you wearing blue today?
In support of anyone on the spectrum, and to help bring about awareness of their need for inclusivity, as well as any attempt to try to start up conversations about the topic, I'm wearing blue today.
For any who didn't know before,
this is where the 'lyco' in LycoRogue comes from...
The shirt is sort of a Navy blue, which is a bit dark for the intended purposes of today, especially when the blue linked to Autism tends to be a more vibrant blue, but my other option wasn't very appropriate for today...
Very appropriate for me.
For Autism awareness? Definitely not.
There are more people on the spectrum than you might realize. They can be more independent than you might realize as well. Most want to be included members of their community and the work force. All of them wish to just be included as equals.

 Want to help? Want to participate? Want to start up a conversation to help those with Autism find their greatest potential?
10 Reasons You Should Light It Up Blue on World Autism Awareness Day.

You can also find out more information about World Autism Awareness Day and the Light It Up Blue movement here: World Autism Month

I know, the Autism Speaks organization is kind of a hot-button group for a lot of people. My husband and myself are not fans of part of their mission statement and goals, and we'll find alternative ways to donate towards Autism support. However, Autism Speaks is still one of the leading forces when it comes to Autism awareness, and the easiest way to find information on stuff like the Light It Up Blue movement.

 If you know of any alternative organizations or sites, ones that specifically understand that Autism is just the brain being wired differently than what we consider normal, please let me know. I'd love to support other organizations for this cause.

 Anyway, that's my PSA for the day. I hope this blue promotional font didn't strain too many people's eyes, and that any readers I have that might be color blind to blue were able to still read this intro somehow. Sorry for any distress. Moving on to my writing though!

 And back to normal brown font color.

It's April, which means, once upon a time, that it was Script Frenzy month!
It was so much fun, and I'm bummed I found out about it at the tail end of it's short life. Sadly, The Office of Letters and Light - the people in charge of NaNo - weren't getting enough donations/participation to keep the program running. Quick side note, I know that OL&L officially changed their organization's name to NaNoWriMo to simplify things, but they'll always be OL&L to me.

Anyway!

Poor Script Frenzy was scrapped, but OL&L did give us script writers a bit of a consolation prize.

Now, I haven't written a script - aside from attempting a comic book script for "Glitches" - since Script Frenzy ended, but I still think of April as Writing Month. Oddly enough, though, I have never officially participated in the April Camp NaNo before. So here we go, down the rabbit hole, as I try to use Camp as motivation to FINALLY at least get the first draft of "One and the Same" done.

Last August, when I participated in Camp NaNo, I bought myself a camp shirt. This awesome looking piece of wardrobe:
Image from NaNoWriMo's e-shop.
You can still buy this shirt for only $18.
It's only one shirt, though, and it's specifically for 2018. I'd love one for this year, but they don't seem to have a 2019-specific one designed. Based on the shirt description, it seems they are going with a throw-back shirt without any year indicated on it. I like that I can wear it any year without it being dated - literally and fashion wise - but I also kind of like having the dates as a sort of time-stamp of when I participated. Either way, cool shirt with the original Camp NaNoWriMo logo. I'll have to squirrel away some cash so I can buy this before the end of the month....
Image from NaNoWriMo's e-shop.
You, too, can buy this shirt. It's currently selling for $20.
I've also been sorted into a cabin specifically for fantasy and Steampunk writers.

I'm not entirely sure OatS fits there, but I guess a fanfic about a superhero show kinda counts as fantasy??? But, hey, I found me some fantasy and Steampunk authors! I'll have to see if any of them publish their work online, and if so where. I'll then have to track said writing down and add it to my never-decreasing list of "to read" stories.

Speaking of, I read another short fanfic over the week, but forgot to log down how many words it was.

I really need to take the time to do that if I'm using over-all word-count for my reading challenge this year....

Anyway, everything is set for me to crack my knuckles and get started on my project.

I just need to remember to participate....


As I've mentioned in the past, Mondays are pretty much trash days for my writing. I don't know what it is about Mondays, but I never seem to find time to write during them. I was all set to work on my writing at work - as I do - except a semi-major project came down the pipeline for me. So most of my day was dealing with inventory and discontinued/clearanced out products, and prepping the store with the replacement line, as well as pricing everything up for it.... I'll be working on this, while assisting customers, tomorrow as well. Depending on the number of customers, this may be a week-long project.

So, since I'll actually be WORKING at my job - gasp, I know! - I guess I should focus on setting up writing sessions at home. Squirrel myself away in my bedroom. Or... if the weather finally decides that it is indeed spring, maybe I could start hanging out on the front porch again to avoid the dreaded siren's call of the TV.

The other snag with my writing - aside from being easily distracted - is the fact that I STILL don't have a solid plotline that I'm happy with.

So far, this is my story... skip ahead a bit if you don't want spoilers.
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Anyway, here's my very vague plot thus far:
  • Akuma attack to establish the world
  • Chat Noir/Adrien, post-attack and while alone in his room, laments his predicament with regards to his relationship with Ladybug/Marinette.
  • Marinette becomes quite confused when Adrien starts acting like Chat Noir in school.
  • Adrien becomes depressed when he doesn't think Marinette will ever fall for Chat Noir. Meanwhile, Marinette becomes stressed out about her potential meeting with Gabriel Agreste about her fashion designs.
  • Chat Noir helps Marinette destress and become more confident in her clothing design, starting a friendship between the two. Yes, they were already friends, but Marinette doesn't realize she's already friends with him as Adrien, and also doesn't realize that Chat Noir knows he's friends with Marinette already.
  • Start of Act II: where there are a bunch of cute scenes as they build up their friendship and Adrien finds out that Marinette is in love with him. I don't really have a cohesive time-line though to thread the scenes together, nor do I have much drama; just a bunch of fluff....
  • Act II midpoint (Main Culmination?): Marinette realizes that she has fallen in love with Chat Noir as well, and is torn between the "two men"
  • Act III: Marinette struggles with the realization that her heart is now torn in two - much like how Adrien was in "Peeping Tomcat." 
  • Adrien suspects that he succeeded in making Mari fall for both sides of him, and tries to convince her that it's fine for Ladybug and Chat Noir to reveal themselves to each other; as a means to bond and a way for them to finally be together.
  • Third Act Twist: Frustrated that Ladybug STILL won't let them reveal who they are, Chat Noir accidentally lets it slip that he already knows she's Marinette. This leads to him finally confessing to his spying on her for a week, and spotting Tikki. 
  • Ladybug is furious and sprints off to get ready for her date with Adrien, not realizing she just stormed off on him.
  • While waiting for Adrien, Marinette continues to fume about Chat Noir's betrayal. In doing so, she realizes that part of CN's "deception" was pushing her to confess her feelings to Adrien. If Chat Noir knew she was Ladybug the whole time, why would he not only want her to confess her feelings to another boy, but also actually cheer her on and root for her to be with her crush?
  • Marinette realizes EXACTLY why Chat Noir would do such a thing, and has a bit of a break down as her brain resets.
  • Marinette storms up on Adrien, but he manages to temporarily calm her by reminding her they don't want a scene. But once he can get them somewhere private, she goes OFF on him.
  • Calmed down, they talk more about their respective feelings, and why they love the other. They both realize it's not some superficial thing, and they actually do have something real.
  • Marinette confesses that Adrien has to work to build up trust between them again, but they're at least back to the level of trust they had when they first became partners.
  • They start dating. YAY!
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OKAY! SPOILERS OVER NOW! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU SKIPPED THE LAST PART!

For those who did read, I know it actually seems like a lot. However, for those who did read, and for those who skipped over, there is one main take-away you should focus on. Yes, I have the first act more-or-less figured out. I also have the final act sorted out aside from possible tweaks the closer to it I get. The MIDDLE, however? How do I middle!?

I have scenes. I have snippets. I know what KIND of character growth I want to have, but I don't know really HOW to get there. This story is going to be so much fluff, and barely any drama. And then BAM! Drama smacks you upside the head during the final act.

Like... what!?


I have to remember to not focus on that. I have to remember to write fearlessly this month. Write that self-indulgent fluff. Enjoy it. Remember that it's fanfiction, and it's kind of SUPPOSED to be self-indulgent. If I don't believe it's the same caliber as “Peeping Tomcat” then that's fine. I can do better next time.

I can then remember that this is still the first draft. Perhaps I'll figure out the drama as I revise. Perhaps this story will become darker than I realized. That always seems to happen to me. Not that the story becomes "dark", per se, but it becomes more emotional than I thought.

I'm empathic by nature. This is probably why so many of my reviews comment on how well I write the characters - even ones like Kagami who doesn't have much screen time - and why so many readers praise my ability to write a story that feels like an episode. I'm just... generally good at getting into someone's head.

By no means am I perfect at it. I still screw up. I still get confused as to why certain people react a certain way. I'm empathic, but I'm not a mind reader. Nor am I that person. If I haven't experienced what they have there is NO WAY I can truly know what's going on with them. And, honestly, everyone experiences everything differently, so even if I have gone through the same thing, I STILL can't fully understand their experience.

Anyway, my point is, when I write, I tend to delve a bit into the heads of the characters, and scramble things up a little while in there. When I come out, I end up bringing drama with me. This is why "Prescription for Love" went from a 1000-word one-shot to a nearly 20,000-word multi-chapter story. Same deal with "Build Your Own Luck", which was also supposed to be a simple little drabble. And "Woven Heartstrings" was a Christmas gift that ended up taking the entirety of January to tell.

Heck, when I took PT from a writing practice one-shot to a novel-length fanfic, I never expected it to become so angsty or surpass 80,000 words.

It just... happens.

So I need to stop being so fearful and trust that it will happen again in OatS. I just need to WRITE it for that to happen.

I did mentally work on the next chapter - linearly speaking - as I struggled to fall asleep last night.

I also figured out

So... there's that. I just need to get those thoughts down on paper.

I also need to figure out the oh-so-dreaded akumas for this story. As well as the lucky charms and how they can be used to stop the villains. Mainly how to stop my opening akuma attack.

I hate akumas so much. How is the show's writing team so good at them!?

Also, the fanfic writer Nkemmer777 is pretty good at them as well. Check out this passage from her story "Joke's On You."
Marinette

I called upon my Lucky Charm. A pair of polka dotted scissors fell into my hands.

“Can we please cut this battle short, I kinda have a test to finish.” [Chat Noir said]

I rolled my eyes, searching for clues. Not surprisingly, the scissors had nothing to do with the net.

“I need your belt, and Fisherman in the park.” Without a word, Chat handed me his belt while I broke the scissors in half.

“That plan seems kinda fishy if you ask me.” I groaned, knowing our time was running out. “If you have any better puns let minnow.” In response, I wrapped my yo-yo around his foot, launching him at Fisherman.

“Chat, use your Cataclysm!”


Adrien

Of course, she just has to throw me, I thought sarcastically to myself while shouting out my power. My hand met the lamppost next to the Akuma. It fell, blocking his path. I ran to the other side of him, making sure that he followed me to the park near our school.

“Up here!” Ladybug called out from the top of a nearby building. I pushed the button on my baton, sending myself up next to her.

As Fisherman entered the park, he stepped on the screw from the scissors, hopping on one foot until he tripped over my belt that had been wrapped around both handles of the scissors, which were stabbed into the ground.
Yes, there still needs to be a little bit of polishing with her story, but she's working on that. The story as a whole is really interesting, and what she has up right now hooked me. My point, though, was the creativity she had with Ladybug's Lucky Charm. She got scissors, which seemed simple enough: cut the net. However, the opening of the battle made it obvious that the superheroes couldn't get close enough to the net for them to cut it with the scissors. They couldn't even get close enough for Chat Noir to use his Cataclysm on the net itself.

Instead, Ladybug dismantles the scissors in order to create a trip-wire. This tackled the villain, and managed to drop his guard enough for Ladybug to get to the net and break it. Releasing the akuma, purifying both the magical butterfly and the person it corrupted, and then returning Paris to normal.

This is a VERY Ladybug way of thinking outside the box. I think I'm too... logical? I wouldn't have thought "dismantle the scissors in order to use the screw to throw the villain off balance, and then trip him the rest of the way with Chat Noir's belt tail wrapped around the scissor handles shoved into the ground by their points."

Like.... HOW!? HOW DO PEOPLE THINK LIKE THAT!? IT'S AMAZING!

This is why, as much as I love watching them, I will never build my own Rube Goldberg machine. Oddly enough, I'm not that creative... Go figure, right?

Weeeeell.... I DID figure out the "Matchbox to stop Mimicker," and "Chopsticks to stop Terravenger" Lucky Charm solutions for PT. I guess I just need to have faith in my brain.

Now off to write fearlessly!
Posted by at 11:45 AM Labels: , , , , ,
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Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Queen of Angst Returns

Happy belated Memorial Day if you are American.... which seems weird to say... "Happy" Memorial Day, when the point is to reflect upon and remember military members who have died in service....

Um... well.... either way....

The week has been a bit chaotic thanks to Memorial Day. Sadly, it has sort of become synonymous with "Great Sales and/or Barbecue Weekend." So we were SLAMMED at work. Leaving me with roughly... 45min all week to write.

Although, who else has time to write during their normal 9-to-5? So I guess I shouldn't be grumbling. Still, it left me with a lot fewer hours to work with than I was hoping for, and I wasn't exactly using them well.

I know I already mentioned this last week, but I wanted to introduce the next akuma in chapter 8 of "Peeping Tomcat." So I spent a lot of last week working on him. I mean, A LOT of time....

As I also mentioned, I was then trying to use what I came up with to write a "behind the scenes" short, much like what I did for Mimicker to help me sort things out. Problem being that I was spending too much time writing that, and not enough writing the next chapter of "Peeping Tomcat."

Normally, slacking off isn't that bad. I mean, it's still bad. It still takes me a lot of time to edit each chapter, but that's all I'm doing: editing. I had to actually WRITE this chapter this time, as well as have time to edit it so it's at the same level as the other chapters. It wouldn't be fair to my readers if they got a sub-par chapter because I slacked off.

I had also unofficially started posting shorts on my Tumblr every three days, and Wednesday would be the next day to post something. Things were getting crazy.

So I ended up giving up the shorts. Yes, it was great seeing the love of my stories getting likes and reblogs on Tumblr, but I had a priority: my main story. What was the point of getting likes, reblogs, traffic, any of that stuff, if I had no story to promote? I had to focus on that.

I spent a lot of Wednesday getting the nuts and bolts of the story sorted out, and then Thursday trying to finish it. I didn't do too well, because I was also exhausted from work, and we kept having impromptu guests. I love guests. I love people. I'm an extrovert. But even I got to a point where I want to say "Gaaah! Get out of my house! I need to write!"

In fact, I think I DID say that at one point. Thankfully, Hubby simply went on a Pokemon Go walk, so it all worked out. There are multiple ways to support the artist in your life, peeps.

Anyway, on Thursday I stayed up until about 1am before my eyes fogged over. That was my white flag. I had to go to sleep, and since I couldn't really see my computer screen anyway, it seemed as good a time as any.

Getting back up around 6am, I rushed through the last few hours of writing, editing, and posting my latest chapter. All while also taking Hubby into work before having to get ready for work myself.

I was exhausted, but I had done it. I wasn't even late! My 8:30am chapter update schedule stayed in tact. Although, my promoting of it didn't. I just ran out of time to do my normal promotional circuit - my personal FB page, the fanfic FB group, Twitter, and now Tumblr - and still get to work on time. So I had to wait until my lunch break at 1:15pm to promote my story.

Speaking of, have you had a chance to read the latest chapter yet? If not, don't forget that there are three convenient sites you can read it on.

FanFiction         ArchiveOfOurOwn         DeviantArt

Despite the struggles, I think I did fairly alright for myself.
FFN: 672 views, 1 faves, 2 followers, and 2 reviews
AO3: 196 views and 5 kudos
DA: 10 views

Total Results: 878 views, 6 faves, 2 followers, and 2 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 2 likes for my promotional post

The comments:
  1. Man this was an epic fight scene in my head! :o I can see Chat just leaping onto Marinette's balcony later on that day since he is so distraught and to check on her, while she tries to find out what's wrong with him.
So glad you updated btw ~

  2. So much angst!
I'm actually pretty impressed that I received the amount of views I did within the first 24hrs. Mainly because of that delay in promoting. That may have skewed the stats a bit, and I'll probably wonder for a while still what my stats would have looked like if I got to promoting on time. Oh well...

Those comments made the struggle worth it. I mean... "epic fight"? Me? I wrote a fight scene that someone thought was "epic"? Also, that "so glad you updated" made me smile.

I'm glad too, reader.
Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.
That second comment also made me laugh. I mean, I AM the Queen of Angst. Haha. I'm hoping the angst was at least appreciated. I'm assuming so based on the simple-sentence review. Even if it wasn't, I'm going to pretend.


So, someone in the fanfiction FB group asked if she should expect more or fewer views this weekend. On the one hand, most Americans had a three-day weekend, which meant more free-time to do things like read fanfiction. On the other hand, Americans could be slammed at work - like I was - or be otherwise busy with things such as family trips and/or barbecues to fill that three-day weekend.

Another member responded that most people have other things they do on the weekend to take advantage of having days off, and so views are always slow over those few days. Said member also stated that was why he never posted over a weekend. Most views come in on weekdays.

I always saw the opposite. Maybe it's because my story gets buried by other new stories and updates by Monday, but my view count seems to drop to a crawl after the weekend. The stats thus far for the week, post the initial 24hrs, seems to follow that trend:
FFN: 1096 views, 4 faves, 8 followers, and 4 reviews
AO3: 295 views and 13 kudos
DA: 12 views and 1 fave

Total Results: 1403 views, 18 faves, 8 followers, and 4 reviews

Tumblr Notes: I got a third like....

One of the two new comments (see below for Jowy's):
  1. The poor kitty needs to talk to his lady"s" quick before he gets injured.
     (Another lovely comment from cassy1994)
In other words, here are the stats from 8:30am Saturday until now:
FFN: 424 views, 3 faves, 6 followers, and 2 new reviews
AO3: 99 views and 8 kudos
DA: 2 views and the new fave

Total Results: 525 views, 12 faves, 6 followers, and 2 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 1 new like
According to my email notifications from FFN, 106 of those views, 2 of those follows, 1 of those faves, and cassy's review, were all from yesterday and earlier today. The rest were from the weekend. While I can't track the views on AO3 the same way I can on FFN, I can at least say that half of those new kudos came from either yesterday or this morning. I have no way of tracking DA without physically doing so myself.

So.... like I said.... my stories peter off once the weekend ends. I don't know if it's because new stories flood the sites on Monday, and mine gets buried, or if different fandoms have different reading trends, or if that one fanfic group member just has no clue what he's talking about. But I think I have enough proof to keep up my Friday updates, even once I'm done with "Peeping Tomcat."

Anway, going back to touch upon Jowy's Pixie's review. I'm beginning to love seeing the names cassy1994 and Jowy's Pixie in my email notifications.
Jowy's Pixie: Wow, up until 8:30 in the morning? I hope you're okay! Please get some sleep and don't worry about us! o_O
         Also, CALLED IT! I knew he'd probably end up being akumatized! I totally get what you mean about trying to think of akumas though. It's such hard work and I have no idea how Astruc and his team manage to do it either. I'm always tearing my hair out trying to think of something. But you nailed it pretty well, the motivations were very believable and understandable with a decent build up.
         Poor Chat Noir throughout that entire battle, so distracted by thoughts of Marinette. Oh dear oh dear, the poor boy really is whipped and he has no idea. I just want to leap into this story and give him a good shake, he's so clueless. I felt so sorry for him at the end of the chapter, thinking he was nothing more but a sidekick and didn't deserve to be by Ladybug's side. I have a feeling he might turn to Marinette for comfort over that. I just hope that Ladybug/Marinette can reassure him that that's not the case at all.
         Once again, this chapter was a very enjoyable read. I'm really looking forward to the next chapter to see what happens. As always, this was very well written and I really love the detail that you go into, describing the world around them and the thoughts and emotions that Chat/Adrien is experiencing. Keep up the fantastic work!
I guess in my sleepy daze Friday morning I didn't express myself properly. I did reassure Jowy's that I didn't pull an all-nighter. While it wasn't top-notch self-care, since it was barely 5hrs of sleep, I do make sure to not push myself too much. Besides, once in a blue moon should be fine, right?

I did appreciate the sentiment of "don't worry about us! o_O" though. With all the rabid fans out there always whining "when are you going to update?" it is nice to know that there are still decent fans out there as well, who know you need to focus on you first and this hobby second.

And of COURSE I do keep this hobby second.... totally.... absolutely....
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by Hanasake Pictures Inc
Which is why I also went back and finished that side-story about Michel's transformation into Terravenger.

"I am Terravenger"
On FanFiction         On Archive Of Our Own           On DeviantArt

I wanted to have this up on Friday as well as a sort of "bonus chapter" but I couldn't get far enough into it to have it ready to publish. I tried again Saturday, and got a good chunk done, but I also didn't have much spare time. Sunday I had to drop Hubby off at work super early in the morning, so I had about four hours to myself.

So THAT was when I got the story nearly done. I was about three paragraphs away from finishing when I realized that I had to be at work in about 20min, and I still hadn't gotten dressed or fixed my hair!

Yup. TOOOOOOTALLY a hobby that doesn't take priority in my life. I have my priorities straight....

When I got home from work I was so hangry and exhausted I just gobbled down dinner and passed out while Hubby and Omnibladestrike went on a Pokemon Go raid. When the guys got back we hung out, and Omni talked about how he expanded a bit on his fanfic. That was the extent of our "writing date" though since I was still dazed.

It wasn't until after he left at about 10pm that I went back to write the closing paragraphs of "I am Terravenger" and edited it.

It went live right around midnight, and then I crashed after promoting it.

Not even 24hrs later, I already got a comment on both my FFN and AO3 postings. They both made me chuckle. Warning, they both contain a spoiler.

On FFN: "Of course that's what happened. Dammit, Roger."

On AO3: "I'd been wondering just what had caused Michel to akumatise (even though it was obvious he would). Wasn't expecting it to be Roger's hair-trigger fine-writing fingers, though. I guess he HAS been building up a tally in Season 2, though..."
Know what I love the most about that AO3 review? The fact that the person had "been wondering" about Michel's akumatizing. That means Draxynnic is a reader of "Peeping Tomcat." Yay. Also, they posted at 12:38am on Monday morning... which means they pretty much saw, read, and commented on the story right after I posted it. Double cool.
Hacker Boy Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc
Anyway, add "I am Terravenger" to the three shorts I posted up on Tumblr, and I think I hit my goal of writing outside my main WIPs each month.

OH! And I did write a fifteen-minute practice piece during one of my "writing dates" with Omni a couple of weeks back. I never did go back to edit and publish that. I'll have to see if I can find time...

Speaking of, I ran out of time last week, so I didn't get to let you guys know this. While out watching the second Deadpool movie, Hubby found Pop Vinyls of me and Ronoxym. So naturally I had to buy them.


Looks just like us. 😉
Another thing I didn't have a chance to talk about - which semi relates to Ron since we went to watch "Ready Player One" together with our spouses - is how I'm doing with my reading challenge.

Let's see, shall we?
Sadly, I have to update this list. I'm so used to Riordan writing a five-part series I didn't even notice that he wasn't going to continue with Magnus Chase. Makes sense, it ended nicely. I guess I just wasn't ready to let go, considering I was liking that series more than the Apollo one. It's probably my love of snarky first-person protagonists....

Anyway, seems Magnus Chase was only a three-part series, much like the Kane Chronicles. However, no longer needing to tag-team stories but having mastered the art of releasing a "spring" and "fall" book, I'll have the fourth story in the Apollo series in... October, probably, based on past release patterns.

As far as how I've been doing with the books I actually have on this list? Well, I'm almost half-way through "The Burning Maze." I FEEL like I'm behind since "Ready Player One" took about six weeks or so to re-read, but thankfully I was already ahead. As long as I finish "The Burning Maze" before the end of June I'm still good.

Speaking of taking over a month to re-read "Ready Player One," the reason was because I was going at it with a very critical eye. I started off just seeing what was different between the movie and novel, but it devolved into something more as I really paid attention to the actual structure of the story.

Let's start with the movie adaptation, though, because ho-lee-smokes was a lot changed for the movie.

I mean, I knew it would be changed slightly, but with Ernest Cline writing both the novel and the screenplay, I was hoping for a much more faithful adaptation. Even when I was watching the movie I thought "wow... this... is different." Ron and I even had a playful but heated debate about it.

I have to say though, much like with "Coraline," I think I prefer the movie version. True, there are things that were better in the book... um.... mostly the character development of all the side characters. Pretty much none of that made it to the movie, and that sucks majorly.

On the flipside, the movie gave Art3mis more involvement and badassery? She basically took the reins for some of Wade's storyline; spreading it out and sharing the wealth a bit. Same with Wade's computer/programming genius shifting to Aech in order to fill out that character a bit more. Even out the value and necessity of the members of the High Five instead of skewing everything towards Wade.

Which brings me to why I think I preferred the movie, while I still love the novel.

On the first read, there were glaring flaws, mostly dealing with time continuity. Anyone who read my blog two years ago might remember me raging about it. I also talked about some plot and character missed opportunities I wished Cline had taken. All-in-all, though, I thought the novel deserved an 8.5 out of 10.

Upon the second read, however, especially with the notes I was taking....
God, I'm such a nerd....
...well... I think I'm giving RPO a 7.5 out of 10 now. It just became so obvious that this was his first novel. The story is still exciting. I still love it. The 80s nerd culture is fantastic. I still laughed. It was still a page-turner. I will probably re-read this book a few more times. So don't get me wrong on any of that. I still highly recommend it, and it's still a great romp.

All that said, I have to say I'm a bit disappointed in the novel's storytelling techniques, especially now that I saw more of the potential showcased in the movie. It was like Cline went through the screenplay of his novel and realized "shoot! I need to rework this." In other words? The novel was a great first draft, but there needed to be a lot of reworking to get a truly excellent story, and all that improving ended up changing a LOT of the plot.

Yes, there is a heart-wrenching bit that was ignored by the movie, and some social commentary as well. The book will always be better than the movie because of that. Same with side-character development, as I already said. The thing the movie does better though, is that WADE gets development. HE has real trials.

Wade in the book? Well, he basically has the classic case of character plot armor. He's the one telling the story, so you KNOW nothing happens to him, but other stories - such as the Percy Jackson or Magnus Chase stories - have the same first-person flaw, and yet you still worry about their safety. You still wonder HOW they will get out of the problem.

Wade, though? Any sort of danger he's in is written in a sentence or two before moving on:
As my ship blasted its way skyward, I began to take heavy fire from several directions. But I was lucky. My ship was fast, and my shields were top-of-the-line, so they managed to hold up long enough for me to reach orbit. But they failed a few seconds later, and the Vonnegut's hull suffered an alarming amount of damage in the handful of seconds it took me to make the jump to light speed.

It was a close call. The bastards almost got me.
-pg 232
Did they, Wade? Did they?

I bet you didn't feel worried at all for him, did you? You didn't have the TIME to. He got away too quickly, and any danger he was in was summed up in a sentence or two. Plus, you'd be surprised how many times the phrase "I was lucky" or some variation of it is used throughout this story. This kid should have been playing the lottery while searching for Halliday's Easter Egg. He may not have needed to be a gunter after all, with the luck he has. Plus, did Wade really DO anything to get out of danger, or prevent himself from being injured? I mean, aside from throwing a lot of money into precautionary items?

The book was basically "look how awesome this kid is, but he's going to be totes low-key about it. #humblebrag" with a plot of "oh look! A puzzle to figure out!" There's a little bit of a race element as well, but the villain gets the lead with fourteen chapters left to go, and the "end game" takes up the entire third act - about 11 chapters - and roughly a week within the confines of the story.

AGAIN, "READY PLAYER ONE" IS A HIGHLY ENJOYABLE BOOK. PLEASE DO NOT LET ME CONVINCE YOU OTHERWISE. GO READ IT. TRUST ME.

But it is still obvious it is the freshman work of an author. Same goes for my re-reading of the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. It's a good read, but once you take a more critical eye to it, the flaws are pretty obvious.

To be fair, though. They are still published, professional authors. Whereas I am not. Also, Paolini wrote Eragon while he was still in high school soooooooo.....

And my characters kind of have "plot armor" as well. I just can't seem to ever injure them. The best I have is the angst.... which is probably why I am the queen.

My characters won't so much as break a nail, but they'll get so twisted up in a social/romantic web that - hopefully - the reader is still concerned and wonders how the protagonist is going to get out of the mess.

Speaking of, I think it's time for me to put Adrien through a deeper level of existential crisis. Catch you all next week.
Posted by at 11:45 AM Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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