Prepping for Camp

Happy summer, everyone! Sadly, for me, the summer thus far has consisted of oppressive heat with humidity bringing the heat index close to 110-degrees Fahrenheit. Either that, or torrential downpours. Not the best start for a “relax outside and write” type of summer, but it hasn't even been a week yet. Besides, the solstice itself was fantastic. Hubby and I celebrated at Shadow's place. He has a large man-made pond connecting his backyard to that of his 20-or-so neighbors' that he swims and canoes in. He also has a fairly decent-sized yard and a fire pit. So Hubby managed to build a tall and super-hot fire in the pit that we sat, ate, and later danced around. We attempted to roast marshmallows, but the flames were so hot you had to cover your face to get close enough to roast anything. We had a bunch of s'mores regardless. We just were crafty on how we got close to the flame. We even had a small, nothing-actually-shot-into-the-air, fireworks show on Shadow's pier. It was a good night.

Trish was thrilled.

It's been so long since I've written anything for either X-Future or Glitches. I do miss writing for My Girls. No one has seen nor heard from Lia in ages. Colette and Crystal are all but forgotten; hiding in the depths of my mind. Amara pokes her head out every once and a while. As per usual, Willow and Trish are the dominant two; begging for me to write about them again.

I may have to indulge them. I do still have a few WIPs about both of them that I need to finish up. Problem is that Ronoxym has been super busy lately, and hasn't really had any time to write. It's hard to co-write something when your co-author can't really find the spare time to help. I already feel like I'm taking over the stories; I don't want to completely “steal” them by finishing them off without his input at least.

On the other hand, Cyhyr and I have been doing more and more chatting about writing as she's starting to get back into the rhythm and habit of doing so. Perhaps she can poke her husband a bit to jump start his writing too.

Speaking of Cy, we're doing Camp NaNo together. I even set up a cabin for our online writing group. It seems like just the two of us are participating though, so, as per Cy's suggestion, I'm probably going to be opening up the cabin to “randos.” If you're planning on doing Camp in July and want to join our cabin, feel free to contact me over on the Camp NaNo site, and I'll send an invite. The morning of Thursday, June 28th I'll open up our cabin to the public and I won't be able to send invites anymore; it's just the luck of the draw at that point. So be sure to contact me quickly if you want in.

In regards to my Camp prep, well.... I have mixed feelings.

For a while now I have known the basic idea of what I wanted to do for “One and the Same.” I wanted it to be based on the movie “You've Got Mail” but, as I expressed in earlier blog entries, I can't get an exact parallel. For one, in YGM the protagonists are heated rivals in their everyday lives, and only deep companions in their secret online lives. Adrien and Marinette don't hate each other, nor are they rivals, so that alone makes things a bit odd to try to create a true crossover sort of thing. Secondly, Ladybug isn't in love with Chat Noir, so the dynamic with regards to the “secret lives” isn't the same either. I mean, I can easily tweak both to still get it to fit, but it's already starting off with challenges. The next challenge is that in YGM one person – Joe – knows that the rival and the online love interest are the same person and loves said person completely. Easy enough. I have that set up with Adrien in “Peeping Tomcat.” The snag is that the second person – Kathleen – doesn't know the love interest and rival are the same, and only romantically cares for the person they know nothing about – NY152. Which would mean that Marinette would have to be in love with Chat Noir, but have no romantic interest in Adrien; the exact opposite of what is actually going on.

Now, it would be easy to do a role-reversal and have Marinette be “Joe” and Adrien be “Kathleen,” resulting in Marinette playfully picking on Ladybug as she tries to woo Adrien, while also testing the waters to see why he loves Ladybug in the first place. Unfortunately, that's not possible as a sequel to PT. The other snafu is that a role-reversal would also flip the Joe/Kathleen dynamic. She's the daughter of a beloved little shop owner whose business is collapsing under the competition of a conglomerate run by her rival, the easy going son of an aggressive and distant business man.

Perhaps sometime down the road I'll do a true crossover, complete with an AU to create the rivalry/love dynamic better fitting the movie plot. It's easy enough to do. Despite Nino's suggestion that Adrien explain the misunderstanding about the gum on Marinette's seat, he never gets the courage to do so. Marinette continues to hold a grudge against Adrien, assuming he's just another shallow Trust Fund kid and super model. Meanwhile, she falls for her flirty, attractive partner who encouraged her when she thought she could never be the hero Paris needed. Since Gabriel's fashion business wouldn't really affect the Dupain-Cheng bakery the rivalry would probably just stay in school.

Might be a fun story/series to write. Another plot bunny to let grow on the farm.

I may never leave this fandom at this rate....

Getting back to “One and the Same” and my Camp prep. I realized that with so many obstacles preventing me to do an exact parallel for the movie “You've Got Mail,” I had to instead focus on STYLIZING the story off the movie.

Namely, how Joe, knowing Kathleen and Shopgirl are the same person, managed to figure out Kathleen's true feelings about NY152 while also wooing Kathleen as himself. That way he knew she would be so in love with both sides of him that she could forgive his company running hers out of business. She would be happy that her love NY152 is also the man she's grown to love: Joe.

THAT is what I want for OatS. Adrien has to figure out what Marinette's true feelings for him are while also winning her over as Chat Noir. That way, he hopes, she'll forgive him for spying on her for a week and finding out that she's Ladybug. She'll just be so happy that her love Adrien is also the man she's grown to love: Chat Noir.

That is the parallel I want to draw. I just need to figure out how to get there.

I created three plots/sub-plots in “Peeping Tomcat”: Adrien, as Chat Noir, needing to confess to Marinette that he spent a week spying on her; Adrien needing to figure out if he loves Marinette for who she is, or just because she's Ladybug; and Adrien needing to restore his confidence as a superhero and Ladybug's partner.

In the latest chapter I hope I managed to tie up the issue with Adrien's feelings for Marinette.

FanFiction         ArchiveOfOurOwn         DeviantArt

It was a tough go, which I'll get into later in this post. The point I want to make here is that I'm still left with two more plotline issues. I've decided to use Chat Noir's confession in “One and the Same,” but I have to tie it up enough in PT that readers don't feel cheated. Like I'm forcing them to read OatS in order to get the satisfaction they want in knowing that Chat did the right thing. I don't want people raging at the end of my story: “WTF!? Adrien STILL NEEDS TO TELL HER! You can't let him get away without doing so.”

I mean, I fear I'm going to get those reviews regardless, but I hope to present everything in just a way that people will understand and just kind of let it go??? I mean, anyone who is in the fandom knows that Marinette does just as creepy – maybe creepier – things.

She has her bedroom practically wallpapered with his pictures. She has a print-out of his personal schedule, which she memorizes to the best of her ability. She brings a kid she's babysitting to the park specifically to watch Adrien's photo shoot. Granted, for that one she ended up doing the right thing and interacting with her charge instead of ignoring the kid, but still.... She's also stolen his phone in an attempt to erase an embarrassing voicemail she left him. She conned a police officer into thinking a fake “no parking” sign she made was real, in order to force Adrien's bodyguard to abandon him in an attempt to find a different parking spot; all so she could attempt to coerce Adrien into going on a rickshaw ride with her and essentially kidnapping him for a date. She bumps Max from a competition he had been looking forward to all year – a competition she knew nothing about just five minutes before, mind you – in order to be teamed up with Adrien and force him into some alone time with her so they could train.

I mean, watching someone from outside their bedroom window is CREEPY. Buuuut, he didn't do it for any sort of dirty, kinky, sexual gratification or anything like that. He kept it innocent and informational, like Jane Goodall observing prime apes or something. So is he really that much worse than Marinette?

I hope not! I hope he feels at least on par with her....

Anyway, my point is, I have to give “Peeping Tomcat” a satisfying ending without that confession, but I also have to figure out when I want the confession in “One and the Same.”

That's actually my biggest hurdle.

I was thinking that the reveal would be a sort of great “All is Lost” moment. Everything is going great. Adrien thinks Marinette could possibly love both sides of him equally. He tries to test the waters by asking one more time for Ladybug to let them reveal themselves to each other, and when she declines he yells that he already knows she's Marinette because he saw Tikki while spying on her for a week. Trust is destroyed. She is in shock. There is no way she could be with Chat Noir now. She still is going to go to her date with Adrien, but could he start a relationship with her knowing she'll never forgive his Chat Noir half?

I think it's a great climactic disaster. Everything will build up to that. No other tragedy throughout the story will be as bad as that.

Buuuuut, there's two issues with that.

The first issue is building the trust back up. That in and of itself could be a whole story. Can I really build it up again in just a chapter or two as I conclude after the climax? Could Marinette possibly be THAT forgiving? Maybe after considering how creepy SHE is?

The second issue is, if I have the confession as the climactic disaster, what am I going to use as the “Mid-Act II” disaster? There should be three throughout a story: an inciting incident, a larger incident for the middle of “act 2,” and a climactic issue, before hitting the conclusion.

If I decide to shift the confession to the middle disaster after all, there are some pros and cons there too. The pros are that it brings OatS closer to “You've Got Mail” since Marinette/Ladybug could be as distrusting of Chat Noir as Kathleen was of Joe. Chat trying to rebuild that trust could be similar to Joe building the awkward friendship with Kathleen. Having that parallel would be nice. And I'd have an interesting story where the trust must be returned to their relationship.The main con is that if the confession is the middle disaster something even WORSE has to be the climax. What could I do that would be worse?

So, for now, I have the confession as the climax, which means I have an opening – an akuma attack having Chat Noir nearly reveal that he knows who Ladybug is, to set up everything – and I have the ending.

The following is what I have for my ending if the confession is the climax. Obviously, spoilers ahead:

Marinette agrees to go on a date with Adrien, but her dream coming true doesn't feel as amazing as she thought it would because now she's torn between him and Chat Noir. As Ladybug, she meets up with Chat Noir, who tries to cash in on her confession that she's having romantic feelings for him. He asks once more to reveal themselves to each other, and Ladybug adamantly refuses. Frustrated with her, he confesses that he already knows that she's Marinette because he spent a week spying on her, and yet Hawk Moth is still no closer to figuring them out. He accuses her of being silly by thinking they can't reveal themselves to their partner. Ladybug points out that the akuma (at the start of the story) almost DID find out because of him knowing, and that is why she can't know who he is. She's also obviously pissed that he invaded her privacy, and ended up finding out who she was as a result. She storms off to her date.

Adrien doesn't know what to do, because he doesn't want to start up a relationship with Marinette as Adrien; it will be like building a relationship on a lie: not letting her know he's Chat Noir. Plagg reassures him that she'll trust him again after she blows off steam. He's told that he needs to trust in how much she cares about both halves of him, promise to NEVER break her trust in any way again, and apologize for what he did. He nervously goes to his date.

Meanwhile, Marinette is understandably upset as she waits for Adrien. Tikki is sympathetic, but also points out that what's done is done, and that Marinette has invaded Adrien's privacy as well. Marinette calms down as she realizes that Tikki is right, and that she should give Chat Noir a chance to make up for everything. She agrees that perhaps it's best to have Chat reveal himself to her since he already knows who she is anyway. Best that she knows who he is too so they can better protect each other.

Realizing that, once she knows who Chat Noir is, the two of them could actually start dating, she wonders if that's what she really wants. She compares Adrien to Chat and realizes that maybe she actually likes Chat more. She can't do the date with Adrien, as much as she had always wanted it. Just before she leaves, however, Adrien shows up.

Marinette awkwardly breaks it to Adrien that there is actually someone else she wants to give a chance to. She vaguely describes Chat Noir, and Adrien internally realizes that she picked his superhero half, and is elated by the prospect of her wanting their civilian forms to be together. Knowing she's ready to find out who he is, he introduces her to Plagg and transforms into Chat Noir. Marinette weeps with joy, confusion, anger that he had yet ANOTHER secret, fear that HE was the one in danger beside her all this time, and relief that she doesn't have to choose between her two loves.

The story concludes with her telling him how happy she is that he turned out to be Chat Noir, and they finally share their first kiss (well, their second if you count Ladybug breaking the love spell on Chat Noir in the episode "Dark Cupid").

So I think I have a fairly decent ending figured out. And I have the opening I mentioned before.

I DON'T HAVE A MIDDLE THOUGH!!!! Ya know, the MAJORITY OF THE STORY!?

I don't know how Adrien goes from “Shoot, the akuma nearly had me reveal both my own identity and Ladybug's. I guess she was right that it's too dangerous to know. Probably shouldn't reveal myself to her then...” to “Come on, Ladybug! What harm is there in knowing? Let's reveal ourselves so we can start dating.”

I don't know how Chat Noir and Marinette start hanging out and how he woos her in that persona. I don't even know if I want Chat Noir to woo Marinette at all. Maybe he's still focused on Ladybug, knowing winning LB over also wins over Marinette. So, instead of “THIS STORY WILL HAVE ALL THE MARICHAT GOODNESS” the story is now “Adrienette vs Ladynor: who wins?” That way it doesn't seem to Marinette that Chat Noir is trying to reveal himself to a random citizen, nor does he seem like a “player” when she – as Marinette – believes he loves HER but he's still trying to reveal himself to LB to open up the possibility of them dating.

It's... complicated....

I also don't know how Chat is going to know that she's falling for that part of him. Nor do I know how to have flirty Adrien prove to Marinette that he likes her, but still avoid actually asking her out and/or starting up a relationship.

So.... THE MAJORITY OF THE PLOT is still a giant question mark.

And Camp starts next month... Er... next WEEK.

Even if I use the month as my sort of “test kitchen” to pants my way through the story, the amount of edits and rewrites I'll probably have to do will majorly delay me.

I don't think I'm going to have this story up at the beginning of October like I originally thought. I was under the impression that in the 15 weeks it kept me to post “Peeping Tomcat” I would be working on OatS, and just have to remember to publish the next chapter of PT on Fridays.

Instead, I'm ripping my hair out trying to rewrite/rework/edit the chapters in just seven days. Heck, this past week I didn't post until 2:45pm instead of my normal 8:30am because I just couldn't get the chapter to work. I also “wasted” the Thursday evening before by partying with Shadow. Whoops....

I'm still working on the rework of the next chapter, and have to get a nice head start on the final chapter before visiting my mom for the weekend and starting up Camp on Sunday!

Which probably means the same thing will happen with OatS. I'll start posting in October – if I can – and edit/post as I go until the end of the year. Will I not be able to do NaNo in November because I'll be too busy trying to keep my posting schedule for OatS?

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

This is a much more aggressive schedule than I was prepared for...

I probably won't get as much accomplished this year as I had wanted. I still have the Trish/Devon WIP and Varekai WIP I wanted to finish. I thought I could do one per quarter of the year, but since I didn't start posting PT until after the first quarter of the year was over, I guess I should have known I was over my head.

I mean, I shouldn't be so hard on myself, I guess. I'm working on a story that is currently at 65,000+ words, and will probably finish with at least 70,000 words. OatS will probably be about the same size.

I may not be like other fanfiction writers who have seven stories going at once, or a new story published and completed each month, or a new short each day on Tumblr. Maybe it's because I'm not disciplined enough. Maybe it's because I don't type/write fast enough. Maybe it's because they have ADHD and NEED to have multiple projects going, and completed quickly, in order to produce anything. Maybe they have more time to write than I do. Maybe I overthink my plots. Maybe I edit more than they do. I could keep going.

Who knows what is different about me compared to them? I just know that I'll depress myself if I try to hold myself to their standards. So I'll try not to. I'll try to be alright with not producing as much as I wanted, because at least I'm still producing. At least I still have a lot of love.

Speaking of which, I haven't gotten to my 24hr or mid-week stats yet!

The 24hr stats were a bit wonky this week. As I mentioned, I posted my story about 6hrs late on Friday. So my 24hr stats went from 2:45pm Friday to 2:45pm Saturday, instead of my normal 8:30am to 8:30am. I don't know if it is because I struggled with this chapter, and perhaps the quality noticeably dropped, or if I just missed my “window” by being late, but my stats were a bit “meh” this go.

FFN: 726 views, 4 faves, 4 followers, and 2 reviews
AO3: 287 hits and 8 kudos
DA: 6 views

Total Results: 1019 views, 12 faves, 4 followers, and 2 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 2 likes

FFN reviews:
  1. Great job, I think you really captured his convoluted and panicked thoughts!
  2. Review by Jowy's Pixie; see below

 Jowy's Pixie: Awww, seeing Adrien interact with Marinette while knowing the truth was heartbreaking. The emotional turmoil was too much to bear. But still, grrrrrr Adrien "just friends" Agreste certainly has made a vengeful return. I really feel like I could bop that boy on the head sometimes. But I can imagine why he's feeling as confused and cornered as he is. He knows that they can't know each other's identities and he found out Ladybug's by accident which he knows she likely won't be very happy about. And of course there's the little detail of him admitting to practically spying on her as well.
          The soup scene between them was so adorable! I was squealing the entire time! Is his little plan to potentially woo her as Chat Noir going to work? I mean, Adrien's secrets have got to be found out at some point right? Stuff like that always catches up to people one way or another. Starting to feel like there's no hope for Adrien at this point ahahaha. Awww, only two chapters left? I'm going to be really sad to see it end, but I'm also excited at the same time to see how you do end this. Awesome chapter as always, keep up the great work! Good luck writing!

It was a relief to get those reviews. As I mentioned, this chapter was a struggle. It was a rough week. Each chapter; each week, I added a bit more drama. It's great for building up a story; to pile on the troubles so the readers don't know how the characters are going to get out. Problem is, even I don't know how they are going to get out. It's easy to set up the drama. It's darn hard to fix it.

I had multiple false starts. I wrote and re-wrote and re-re-wrote. Nothing was working. I couldn't figure out how to handle everything. Nothing seemed to happen in the chapter. It didn't advance anything. The story didn't move forward at all.

I had to stop and figure out what were the issues that needed to be solved and how I wanted to do so. I came up with the plot lines listed above: (1) confess to Marinette that he was spying and thus knows she's Ladybug, (2) get confidence in his skills as a superhero again, (3) figure out if he truly loves Marinette for Marinette.

I knew I wanted to conquer issue number 3 first, but I still had troubles. I couldn't get into the mindset. Then I remembered the scene where Marinette realizes she's in love with Adrien: "the umbrella scene" as the fandom calls it. Complete with the song unofficially titled "in the rain." The song wasn't officially released, but someone called DavidRussell323 recreated it.

I had the song on repeat for about three hours or so. Finally, FINALLY I was in the right headspace. In the end I still wasn't 100% solid with the chapter, but I was content, and I have to learn to let go. I kept reminding myself that, while I have to strive for quality I'm proud with, and quality my readers deserve, I also don't have a professional editor to help me. I'm doing this solo, and for free. I have to stop holding myself to such a high standard. As bad as it sounds, I have to remember to go for "good enough" otherwise I'll never let anything go. I'd probably STILL be working on that chapter. I'd probably never finish writing the one for this Friday.

I can't let it lock me down. When I'm nervous about releasing the "good enough" chapters it makes those kind reviews that much more emotional for me. Reminds me that I'm doing alright. That I can do this. That I made the right choice.

On top of those reviews, I also received a nice pick-me-up on Sunday. During my obsessive checks to see if I received any new reviews, I noticed I actually had more likes/faves/kudos. Adding them to my handy dandy spreadsheet, I discovered I had over 300 total likes/faves/kudos across all three sites since “Peeping Tomcat” first went live at the end of March.

Then, some time between when I checked Sunday night, and when I checked again Monday morning, I surpassed 200 followers between FFN and AO3!

I know, it seems like small peanuts in the grand scheme of things. Especially with over 18,000 views. I mean, that's barely 1% liking, and less than even that for followers. But screw that! I'm still excited about my milestones. Like I just said a few paragraphs up, I need to not compare myself to any other writers.

The only one I should compare myself to is my past self. Am I doing better than she did? Then I'm improving and I'll just keep improving until I'm where I want to be.

I did a whole mini-speech and thank you about the milestones on my Tumblr.

Peeping Tomcat Milestones

As for my Tuesday mid-week stats? Let's see how much I improved from “past self”:

FFN: 1274 views, 9 faves, 13 followers, 3 reviews, and I was added to another community. Neat
AO3: 407 views, 14 kudos, 3 bookmarks, and 1 review
DA: 10 views, 1 fave, and my first comment! Whoo!

Total Results: 1691 views, 24 faves, 16 followers, and 5 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 3 likes

New Reviews:
  1. I can feel him blushing off the words awww
  2. Hes turning into Marinette! Awww so cute! (another cassy1994 review)
  3. This whole thing has been super adorable. I'm loving it. Love how now Adrien is doing the spastic freaking out and stammering and running away thing. Poor boy. Hopefully he can figure himself out. And figures out that Ladybug is only really pushing him away because she likes HIM so much. I plan to enjoy the next few chapters too! Can't wait for next Friday! Thanks for posting!

Does my heart good.

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Another cool note? Along with the milestones of getting my first comment on DeviantArt, hitting 300 overall likes, and getting over 200 followers, I hit two milestones on FFN alone.

Namely, I have 100 faves and received 50 reviews! It is also now officially my longest story on FFN at 67,642 words, including Author's Notes, so take with a grain of salt. The previous holder of that title was my novelization of the X-Future roleplay board: X-Future: The Second Generation Begins at 67,600 words. Third place is now the first chaptered fanfic I attempted writing: What Is Truly Meant To Be at 61,765 words. The kicker there though is that while PT and TSGB both have 13 or 14 chapters for their word counts, WITMTB only has 8!

"Peeping Tomcat" also now has nearly twice as many views as the second place contender: WITMTB. The "Hey Arnold" fic has 7,369 views compared to PT's 13,761! Wow! "Peeping Tomcat" is also far superior with the 100 faves - second place is The Master of Breaking and Entering at 51. It is also kicking butt and taking names with the 177 follows, compared to second place WITMTB at 38 alerts. It probably had more but people dropped them when I stopped posting, but still....

Trying to ride the high of all these milestones, I tried to finish my prep work for Camp NaNoWriMo. I read through the workbook "Ready. Set. Novel!" Unfortunately, there's not much in there to help with fanfiction: setting and character builds are already figured out, and I already had the rough plot. I went back through the Snowflake Outline method created by Randy Ingermanson, which helped a little, but you saw above how far I was able to get with that.

I'm now behind in figuring out what to do for my next chapter, and I'm going to lose most of my Thursday. I'll be driving down to visit my mom once I get out of work, so whatever I can do while at work is more-or-less my last shot. I need to really crack down tonight and tomorrow!

This whole "get Adrien comfortable as Chat Noir" thing is going to be tough. I'd like for Marinette to be the one to comfort him about it, but I don't know how to have the subject come up. It's going to be tricky, and I feel a bunch more false starts are in my future....

Wish me luck! I got to get back to work!

Also, for the reason why I'm visiting Mom in the first place, let's all take a moment to celebrate her being 23rd year of being cancer free!

Fitting, considering

It's Been A Good Week

How are you beautiful people doing? What's that? Oh, why yes. Yes I am in a very chipper mood, and let me tell you why.

Come. Come walk with me...

So, as per usual, Friday was my weekly update of Peeping Tomcat. It was my second-longest chapter to date. At least, within this story. Clocked in a little over 7200 words, and with barely any dialogue in it, I was getting nervous that this would be my weakest chapter.

I was stressing out and a bit panicked as I spent all of last week trying to edit the chapter. Trying to chop it down. Trying to add dialogue. Trying to make sure I wasn't repeating myself - either by repeating something from earlier in the story, or stating something better used later in the story.

As I got closer and closer to my breaking point, I got a new review on my AO3 publication of PT.

DeathBunnii: Really love the way you write Adrien's POV and thought process.

That was exactly the review I needed at just about the exact time I needed it.

The sixth chapter was pretty much exclusively Adrien's POV and thought process, at least for the back half of the chapter. Having someone telling me that I did that well really helped me get excited about the chapter again.

I still think this is the weakest of my chapters because of how little dialogue there is on the back half, but it's such a crucial chapter as well, so I'm proud of it.

FanFiction         ArchiveOfOurOwn         DeviantArt

The rest of Friday went by, and I tried to not fixate on the number of hits, faves, follows, and/or reviews I got. It was hard, especially since I didn't really have much of an alternative distraction. Soon enough, though, it was 8:30am on Saturday, and it had been 24hours since I published the latest chapter. Check out these stats.

FFN: 672 views, 2 faves, 6 followers, and 1 review
AO3: 221 views and 9 kudos
DA: 12 views and 1 fave

Total Results: 905 views, 12 faves, 6 followers, and 1 review

The new review:
   So close to guessing the truth and he still misses!

As a point of reference, these were my week-long stats for the previous chapter "Mimicker":

FFN: 875 views, 4 faves, 7 followers, and 4 reviews
AO3: 227 views, 5 kudos, 1 bookmark, and 1 review
DA: 40 views(!) and 2 faves

Total Results: 1142 views, 11 faves, 8 followers, and 5 reviews

Real quick about last week's stats. I gathered up 88 more views and one more follower on FFN between my update on Tuesday and my posting "Parallels" Friday morning. On AO3 I got another 36 hits and one new kudos in that same time frame, plus Bunnii's review. DeviantArt dropped off with only five more views, but that random spike is still cool.

Point is, check out the number of views, faves, and followers I got for the entire week after I posted "Mimicker" versus just the first 24hours after posting "Parallels". Cool, huh? I think I really am picking up steam!

Now, let's check out how I've done for the rest of the week thus far.

Normally, I like to update these stats for the moment I post this blog. However, I'm going to keep them as the stats I had the moment I wrote this part of the post. Mostly because, at the moment I'm writing this, I have exactly 7400 views of "Peeping Tomcat", and I think that's so cool!

Anyway, between my posting at 8:30 Friday morning until my writing this bit at 8:30 this morning - so, exactly 96 hours since posting - I had the following stats for this week's update:

FFN: 1174 views(!), 5 faves, 13 followers, and 2 reviews
AO3: 293 views, 12 kudos, 2 bookmarks, and 1 new review
DA: 15 views, 1 fave, but no comments

Total Results: 1482 views, 18 faves, 15 followers, and 3 reviews

The new FFN review was:
 this was really great to see Chat being so reflective about his hobby[sic]

I've already surpassed what I did last week! Heck, just FFN alone basically surpassed the entirety of last week! But I really want to focus on my reviews for a moment.

The one new review I received on AO3 was on Saturday evening. And it just made my week.

Kuro22: Dude, seriously, I feel like there isn't enough people telling you how well-written this fic is.
           I usually HATE first pov fics but this one is....simply so so good????? I really love the train of thought you build, the pace of the fic and, even with no dialogue, we readers feel drawn to this story.
           I am very much looking forward to future chapters, thank you for writing this and sharing it with us!!!

I know, this looks strangely worse
than the actual meme pic...

I wanted to cry. I wanted to ugly cry so bad.

That opening line is what killed me: "I feel like there isn't enough people telling you how well-written this fic is."

I was excited for the 26 reviews I have received between AO3 and FFN. I was happy to receive the 5 reviews I did have over on AO3. I don't want to diminish from any of them at all. But the sheer fact that this person felt that I deserved more love just made my heart swell.

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

The added bonus was that Kuro22 stated that they normally "HATE" first person. I'm not entirely sure why so many people hate this POV, but I do hear it frequently. Anyway, the sheer fact that the person saw "I" in narration, but decided to give it a chance anyway humbles me to no end. Then, to KEEP READING and to say that I did it "so so good"....

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

A writer's ego is a delicate thing, and Kuro22 just armored it! So, if you are somehow reading this, Kuro, THANK YOU!!!

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Okay, seriously, I need to stop being lazy and create my own icons so I can stop stealing from this Hacker Girl sticker collection.... but she's just so perfect for me.

Ya-Ya Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Okay, I'll stop.

Anyway, as much as I loved Kuro22's review, and as much as it made my week, and as much as I keep going back to re-read it to try to get me psyched for the next chapter, I also feel guilty about loving this ONE review so much.

For instance, the other review I got, over on FanFiction.Net, after that initial 24hours, was by cassy1994. It was done roughly at the same time: Saturday night. I don't want to dismiss that person's review, because Cassy has been commenting on nearly every chapter of PT. Seeing this person's name pop up time and time again, proving that I have faithful readers, also means the world to me.

In truth, every review does. Even one of my first ones that corrected a bit of my grammar. I learned something. I improved. It was the definition of a constructive criticism.

Then there are the "simple" ones that are a brief "I love this" or "Please, keep going" or "I can't wait until next update!"

These reviews make my heart swell as well. They truly do. They humble me. They reward me. They push me to keep going. They remind me that people DO like my work. The simplest words mean so much, because it means my work moved someone enough that they felt compelled to tell me so.

So, while I'm gushing over Kuro22's review, I feel guilty about not doing the same with my other reviews. I don't want to take any of those reviews for granted. I don't want to de-value a single one.

It takes a surprising amount of effort to take the time to write a comment/review on someone's story; even the "simple" ones.

So, if you are one of my readers who has left a review, know that they each touch my heart and I am grateful for every last one, no matter how long or short or well written or jumbled English it is. Heck, I may not know exactly what to make of it, but even those goofy "AKDSKFOSHEHS!!!!" type reviews are welcomed. It just means I somehow moved you - or broke your brain - to the point of not coming up with something comprehensible, but you still felt compelled to tell me so.

Okay. Enough gushing, I think. Let's get back to my writing.

Namely, those stats!

I just want to point out how much they have jumped since that initial 24hours after updating.

FFN: 502 views
AO3: 72 views
DA: 3 views

Total Results: 577 views

Normally it just kind of peters out after that first burst. However, this week it seems to still be going strong, which is awesome.

I think part of that might be because the latest episode of "Miraculous Ladybug" finally premiered. That 14th episode that was supposed to come out two weeks ago on Disney UK? Yeah, apparently there was some sort of scheduling miscommunication, and instead it premiered on Disney Spain this past Saturday. It nearly simulcasted with the English dub though, so English speakers didn't have to wait too long for a version we could understand. Although, I do admit that I tried REALLY hard to remember ANYTHING from the six years of Spanish I took between middle school and college so I didn't have to wait for the English translation.

Man, I hate my brain sometimes. Could never really comprehend Spanish, even after all that studying. Add in that I haven't taken a class in about 15yrs....

Anyway, as I theorized before, I continue to believe that new episodes completely spike potential fanfiction readership, even if said fanfic doesn't relate to the latest episode.

On top of that, though, and possibly the reason my AO3 readership is finally starting to slowly grow, I have revived my Tumblr account.

Surprise, surprise. I'm LycoRogue on there as well.
Inside the Tree Trunk

The blog title relates to an old D&D character of mine: Pamela Sheppard, AKA Ariana Snow. Ariana had a nymph admirer who happened to be the high priestess of Ariana's goddess. So, Ari flirted back with the priestess, and the goddess rewarded this (?) by gifting her a magical tree trunk by the nymph's pond. Ari could use a special knock to open up the trunk and use it for storage of her most treasured items. Figured it was basically what I'd be doing on Tumblr.... Minus the special knock.

I don't post anything original all that frequently, but I'm trying to become fairly active in the Miraculous fandom. I reblog frequently. I like more frequently. I try to comment as often as possible.

I then realized, when one of the people I follow promoted the latest chapter of her story, that I'm an idiot and should TOTALLY promote PT on Tumblr. I've also noticed that more and more Tumblr bloggers post/read fanfiction to AO3 than they do to FFN. So, when trying to decide which link to use to promote PT, I went with the AO3 link. Get more people to find me there.

I think it's been working. At the very least, six people have liked the post I shared promoting my story. Maybe that's six more people who found PT that wouldn't have otherwise. Well.... five more people, the sixth one was ChibiSunnie, and I know she's ready to read the story once she has the free time again.

I'll have to keep remembering to promote to Tumblr. Try to garnish more traffic that way.

But wait, because we're not through yet!

Chapter 7 needs a bit more polishing here and there, but was more-or-less ready to post weeks ago. So I was able to use the past few days to focus more on my future writing than focusing on editing this next chapter.

First up? I used that Snowflake Outline method created by Randy Ingermanson to start figuring out "One and the Same" finally.

I have to admit that this sequel to "Peeping Tomcat" is going to be a bit more complicated than I originally thought, now that I'm plotting it out.

First of all, I can't tie it to "You've Got Mail" as directly as I originally thought, as I mentioned last week. Secondly, Ingermanson's structure suggests "three disasters and an ending" for story structure. It would be the equivalent of the concluding conflict of Act I, the mid-Act-II conflict, and the concluding Act II conflict: the climax. Then the ending, in Ingermanson's version, is the entirety of Act III.

Coming up with these "three disasters" is proving tricky. I was thinking of having Cat Noir confess that he knows who Ladybug truly is in an attempt to get her to let him reveal who he is to her. It doesn't go well, obviously. The snag though, is I don't know if I want this to be the climactic conflict just before she finds out that Cat Noir is Adrien and is thrilled that she no longer has to be torn between the two men. Because in "You've Got Mail" and even the original "Little Shop Around the Corner" there is a LOT of conflicting emotions in the concluding reveal of who the female lead's pen-pal is. One of those emotions is the sudden realization that if NY152 was Joe this whole time, then when she was talking about NY152 to Joe he was lying to her by not admitting that was him. It also means that he knew who ShopGirl was that whole time and also didn't say anything.

Do I keep that reveal for Marinette? Do I take that part away by having CN admit that he knows who she is? Do I keep it at the end of the story so Marinette has to process that CN knows who LB is AND process that CN and Adrien are the same person all within a few minutes of each other? OOOOOOOr, do I make that my "second disaster" in the middle of Act II? Have her "hate" Cat Noir the way Kathleen hated Joe, so that the re-connect and friendship build also heals the trust between them? Is that too much? Rebuilding trust while also building a romance? I mean, it was done in "You've Got Mail"....????

GAAAH! I'm not sure how I want to attack this story. I might have to switch over to fixing the Devon/Trish battle story instead of flowing directly from "Peeping Tomcat" into "One and the Same".

On the other plus side, I think I've FINALLY figured out my second original akuma attack for chapter 9 of PT.

The show "Miraculous Ladybug" has a lot of nods to pop culture. There are the (not so) subtle nods to classic Hollywood monsters: zombies, King Kong, Invisible Man. Homages to other Hollywood blockbusters: RogerCop instead of RoboCop, a scene where Pixelator asks for Jagged Stone is nearly shot-for-shot from The Shining, the Gorizilla episode also had a near shot-for-shot recreation of King Kong on the top of the Empire State Building. There's inspiration taken from fairy tales, myths, and legends: Befana, Santa Claus, Greek sirens, Cupid, Sapotis. The hints of Marvel and DC comics are also evident: Ladybug is Spider-Man, Cat Noir could be equated to the same-named Black Cat from the Spider-Man franchise as well, Alya's original superhero idol was the American comic book hero Majestia who resembled both Supergirl and Captain Marvel, Dark Owl is supposed to be Batman, and I could probably even equate Hawk Moth with Mr. Freeze from the Batman franchise. Finally, even TV shows/video games are parodied: the bots in Ultimate Mecha Strike III are all pulled from pop culture, the mech attacks mimic those of 90s fighter games, and Kung Food's outfit resembles Goku's from the Dragonball Z series.

With all this pop culture referenced throughout the series, I figured "why not use more from comic books?" I've seen plenty of cartoons that have a villain trying to fight as a voice for nature/Mother Nature/the Earth, etc. However, in just about all of the cartoons I've seen this trope, it's always a female character sort of taking on a role as the avatar for Mother Nature. It works. I get it. Also, females tend to be named after plants more than males, so coming up with names like Poison Ivy is easy.

Well, I wanted my second akumatized villain to be a male, to balance things out since, while males seem to get akumatized more on the show, female akumas seem to be super popular in the fanfiction/fanart. Anyway, I figured "why not have a male equivalent to Poison Ivy?" Having an environmentalist become akumatized and try to return Paris "to nature" was fairly simple, and won't need as much backstory or resolution as a lot of my other ideas. I could give the original citizen a quick nod and introduction in chapter 8, and then have the battle in chapter 9, and try to nod back to him in later chapters, like I'm trying to do with Louise.

In truth, the "post-akumatization" for Louise and this new akuma probably won't really come up, but I'm trying because fans want to know these guys are okay. That's one of the critiques of the show: that not everything that caused the akuma in the first place is entirely resolved - or at least shown as resolved - by the end of the episode.

Anyway, I've got the skeleton of this male Poison Ivy started. I gave him the name Michel, because it seems distinctly French, and no one seems to have used it yet. He's going to be in his early 20s, possibly still a college student. I have his powers mostly figured out, as well as his costume. It's going to be gloriously Power Rangers/Sailor Moon like. I just need to figure out his supervillain name. Not many poisonous plants lend themselves to a male persona. The top runner right now is Mandrake. Mostly because it has the word "man" in it, and "Drake" is a masculine name. However, compared to the other akuma supervillain names, "Mandrake" seems awkward. I'll have to workshop it a bit.

Whoo! This blog post is just going on forever, isn't it!? I told you I had a good week.

I should probably get back to writing my fiction, though. And I'm sure you've given me enough of your time already this week. So, until next Tuesday!

It HAS To Be Spring Now, Right?

Well, happy May, everyone! Yesterday we had snow! Yes, snow! Still! So, I'm hoping now that we're in May that spring will FINALLY show up and I can avoid seeing little white flakes fall from the sky until at least October.

As I write this, it is bright and beautifully sunny outside, so.... maybe?

I want to be able to emerge from my home and write on my front porch again; absorbing the sunlight and only be pale instead of ghostly. I want the sunlight to give me the energy to actually DO some writing. I've been slacking off lately.

Originally, I was going to have "Peeping Tomcat" done and edited before I posted even the first chapter. That way I didn't have to worry about it. I didn't have to think about it. I was then going to take the fourteen weeks I took posting the chapters to write the sequel "One And The Same". That way I could flow straight into that story once done with this one.

I haven't even written out the outline for OATS yet. However, I DID watch "You've Got Mail" while folding laundry the other day in order to help get ideas.

It didn't help as much as I had originally thought.

I forgot that the bits I needed - how Joe convinced Kathleen to fall for him and want him to be NY152 before the meet-up - only took up the second half of the movie, and even then it was only about 20 minutes out of a two-hour film.

On top of that, doing a straight crossover-like fanfic would result in an AU story.

For those who never saw the movie, or the movie/play that inspired it: Joe and Kathleen became internet pen-pals. Neither knows the other's name or what the other looks like. They were careful to not give any specifics about their lives aside from the fact that they both live in New York City. They still created an intense friendship and bond that evolved into love. They decide to meet in person. Joe sees Kathleen waiting for him and is instantly distraught because Joe and Kathleen have been bitter business rivals up to this point. He ends up standing Kathleen up as his internet persona NY152, but still tries to engage her as Joe. It doesn't go well. Yet, he still knows he's in love with her. He just needs her to give Joe a chance to realize that he IS NY152, and the man she loves.

So, he starts an elaborate plan. He smooths things over as NY152, apologizing for "standing her up" at the meet-up, and rebuilding the bond and friendship. He then "bumps into" Kathleen as Joe and tries to start up a friendship, apologizing for running her out of business and trying to help her figure out what to do next in her life. Eventually, Kathleen trusts Joe enough to admit that she has a romance going on with someone she met over the internet. To build the friendship more, as well as to see what Kathleen truly thinks of NY152, Joe starts making fun of her pen-pal. They joke, but Kathleen stays adamant that NY152 is the love of her life.

Once Joe knows that Kathleen is positive that there is no one else for her but NY152, and after he and Kathleen have created a true friendship, he tries asking her out to see what she'd do. He - as NY152 - had already set up a second meet-up and date with Kathleen, and Joe purposely asks for a date on the same day. Kathleen is visibly torn, because she has grown to care deeply for Joe, but still desperately wants to finally meet NY152 and can't think of being with anyone else. She eventually turns down Joe, though still visibly upset by her decision, and heads to the meet-up with NY152 instead.

While she's waiting for her pen-pal, she hears a man call out for his dog Berkeley. NY152 had previously mentioned that he named his dog that, and so this is clearly the pen-pal's way of indicating that he is NY152. Excited, but a bit confused because she recognizes the voice, she turns to the run away dog, and sees Joe chasing after him. She starts crying over the flood of emotions realizing that the two men she has fallen for are actually the same guy, that she's been with the love of her life for weeks, that he used to be her hated rival, and he clearly knew who she was and was purposely playing with her. It was a LOT to take in, and none of it is expressed verbally, but Meg Ryan did a good job conveying it with facial cues.

Anyway, Joe walks over to her, tells her not to cry, and she chokes out that she was hoping NY152 was Joe.

*Wipes brow* Whoo, bit of a lengthy recap, but there you have it.

So, the big thing to point out is that as ShopGirl and NY152, Kathleen and Joe have hidden civilian identities. Making these the equivalent of their superhero identities. They only "meet up" briefly - for Joe and Kathleen it is whenever they have a moment to email back and forth, and for Adrien and Marinette it's whenever they need to save Paris - they know nothing of each other's civilian/personal lives, they don't even know each other's names, they don't know what the other looks like - to some extent with LB and CN - and they promised to not share any personal details, so they connected without truly knowing one another.

However, if the superhero personas are supposed to represent the email addresses, then a direct adaptation would mean Adrien and Marinette would be the bitter rivals, and that Adrien would have to try to build the bridge towards friendship while playfully trying to chip way at Marinette's love for Cat Noir, only to be happy he failed, but also happy that she ended up wanting CN to be Adrien.

In other words, this whole thing predicates on Marinette first loving Cat Noir and only tolerating Adrien, which is the opposite of canon. If I had Marinette figure out that Cat Noir was Adrien first, and had her try to encourage Adrien to want Ladybug to be her, then it would work fairly well. However, I'm already en route to the Big Reveal in Peeping Tomcat being Adrien knowing about Mari. Can't switch gears now.

Also, I'm a firm believer that Adrien DOES already have a crush on Marinette, but it's just overshadowed by his love for Ladybug, and the poor fourteen-year-old can't pick up on the "lesser" love he has for his friend. Whereas, Marinette is so blinded by her infatuation with Adrien that, while flattered and maybe a bit flustered by Cat Noir's flirting, she doesn't seem to really have a romantic interest. He's more of a flirtatious ego boost that she considers a best friend. So she'll take a bit more convincing to fall for CN.

And there's the rub. I need her to fall for the person she doesn't really know. So this is going to be a much looser adaptation than I originally thought.

For "One And The Same" I need Cat Noir to be Joe and Adrien to be NY152. Marinette's crush on Adrien will be solidly known either by the end of "Peeping Tomcat" or right at the beginning of "One And The Same." I haven't figured out which yet. But Adrien still knows how Ladybug, and therefore Marinette, feels about Cat Noir, and doesn't want her to love CN just because he's Adrien. He needs to know that she loves both sides of him, just as he'll figure out that he loves both sides of her before the close of PT.

It will be Cat Noir playfully picking on Adrien, to see Marinette's reaction to it. It will be CN who will "bump into" her, in order to build up the friendship. So, OATS will probably be exclusively MariChat with a small sprinkling of LadyNoir, depending on if I can figure out how to get CN to knock his civilian half down a few pegs while dealing with LB. It could also potentially have a lot of Ladrien as Adrien and LB interact similar to NY152 and ShopGirl in order to keep up that bond.

There is a LOT I need to think about, and I'm so far behind already! Gaaaah!

On top of that, I don't know if I'll be able to get ahead of the eight-ball. I'm struggling with the current chapter, and it's only going to go down hill from here.

The chapter I'm working on has Adrien reflect back on the four days between chapters two and three. However, the flash-back montage ends in spying on Marinette yet again post Mimicker attack. Between his reflection on what he learned about Marinette via his spying and what he discovered that night after the Mimicker attack, Adrien has an epiphany about the fact that Marinette isn't all that different than Ladybug. Little does he know.... poor kid.

So, this is kind of a major turning point for Adrien. It's the start of him slowly realizing that he DOES have a crush on Marinette, and possibly even love her, which then tears him apart because he's now in love with "two woman" - as far as he knows, at least.

The problem is the seemingly awkwardness - at least, to me - of the "flash-back" bits of the upcoming chapter. I'm such a linear writer that any sort of recollection of the past seems weirdly written to me. I also have to have Adrien recap four nights and the significance of these nights while still leaving space for that current night, all while not going overboard on the size of the chapter. It's a task, to be sure.

The seventh chapter I think I'm fairly okay with, so I could try to use NEXT week to get ahead, but that still leaves me with the second akuma attack issue.

Yep. STILL haven't figured that out. I did much more work on Masketeer, but I'm seriously starting to think that he doesn't work with my current story and that he has to be stashed away for some future fanfiction project. Leaving me to start from scratch yet again.

Tanuki Facebook sticker
by Yanare Kuby

I will get this. I know I will. I HAVE to for my story. I'll figure it out. And then I have chapter ten pretty much set. It's the remaining four chapters that I'll need to rework too.

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Thankfully, both Cyhyr and ChibiSunnie should be done with their respective schooling sometime this month, so maybe they can still beta for me to help out with my back half of the story.

In the meantime, I think I'm doing fairly decently by myself. Let's check out this past week's 24-hour stats!

FFN: 546 views, 2 faves, 4 followers, and 3 reviews
AO3: 130 views and 1 kudos
DA: 32 views! 24 of which were for the new chapter. I also got 2 new faves, both of which were for the new chapter, too.

Total Results: 708 views, 5 faves, 4 followers, and 3 reviews

The reviews this week were:
  1. The battle was really fascinating! I hope to see more fights soon.
  2. I really enjoyed this!
  3. A story with intriguing plot, perfect characterization, AND great writing? I’m in heaven :) keep up the great work! Can’t wait for the next chapter!

That last one nearly made me cry. I was just so stunned and humbled by that review. I mean, me!? Just... AAAAAH! Amazing feeling! No matter how many good reviews I get, and how few bad ones, it is always - ALWAYS - so encouraging to have someone tell you how much you're doing it right.

"Intriguing Plot"?
"Perfect Characterization"?
"Great Writing"?

The fact that people see all three of those elements in my story just makes my heart swell.

Qbbie, if you are somehow a reader of this blog, know that I want to just glomp you so bad!

Tohru glomping Hiro from the Fruits Basket anime
Original manga by Natsuki Takaya

Oh! And speaking of blog readers. Over the last five weeks I'm back to averaging about 37 hits. So I guess whatever brought people to my blog in droves of about 400 has ended. I probably scared everyone away with my endless stats dumps for PT.

Oh well. Once again I thank those of you who are here because you are truly interested in the silly things I say. My true readers. I love each and every one of you.

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

And since I'm on the subject of readers, let's come full circle back to Peeping Tomcat. As per usual, you can find the latest chapter up on these three sites:

FanFiction         ArchiveOfOurOwn         DeviantArt

Also, a special shout out to my poor mother. She doesn't really get fanfiction, so she is always very confused when I both talk about it and write it. She also can't stand horror/suspense/thriller/gory stories, but I pretty much exclusively wrote that in middle and high school.

In other words, my entire life my mother has known I have writing talent, but I think I have yet to write anything that falls into her reading comfort zone. Still, the dutiful mother that she is, has read - or at least attempted to read - everything I've ever written and shared.

Most notably, this weekend while we were talking to celebrate her birthday, she asked me to explain FFN to her so she could read PT. I also had to pronounce Kwami for her, and explain that too. I'm hoping she's now all set. We'll see what a non-fan of "Miraculous Ladybug" thinks of my story.

LOVE YOU MOM! AND HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY!

You rock as both a mother and just a warm-hearted person. I love how much you try to not blindly believe your daughters have talent, but wish to experience it yourself, even if we don't really use mediums or themes you normally check out.

So, can we all just stop for a moment and give my mom major props? Her and Hubby are my rocks and my biggest cheerleaders when it comes to my writing. Shortly followed by Chibi and my one uncle.

Love you!!!!!

You guys rock!

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Okay, back on topic.

As of this posting, my current weekly stats for week five of "Peeping Tomcat" are as follows:

FFN: 787 views, 4 faves, 6 followers, and 4 reviews
AO3: 191 views, 4 kudos, and 1 bookmark
DA: 35 views and 2 faves

Total Results: 1013 views, 10 faves, 7 followers, and 4 reviews

The latest review:
  1. I really liked Mimicker! She seemed like an akuma that would be on the show!

I'm so glad I did well with Mimicker!!! I hope to do just as well with whomever my second supervillain is. And THIS right here - this review - is why I struggle for so long. I want to make sure the end result is "right" and fitting for the show.

Also, with the followers I gained this week, I have hit over 100 followers on just FFN alone! Now, it's not much in the grand scheme of things. Over on FFN, the most followed story has over THREE THOUSAND FOLLOWERS! It's a completed story, and I guess I now have to check it out if it's that popular!

Quite a few Miraculous stories have over 1000 followers. So, having only 100 is kind of small peanuts. However, for a relatively unknown author within the fandom to have over 100 followers in just over a month is so cool!

I'm going to focus on that.

But I'm sure you guys know that I don't JUST have the latest chapter of PT to share. At the beginning of the year I promised myself that I'd post something new each month, excluding the chapters of my WIPs. So, to stick with that, I went ahead and worked on a "character study" short for Elymoxa.

"No Need To Daydream"

On DeviantArt       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On FictionPress

So, there you go! Two different things to read this week! Bonus? "No Need To Daydream" is less than 750 words! When do I ever write anything that short? So, go. Read. Let me know what you think.

In the meantime, I really need to get cracking on the back two-thirds of PT. Catch you guys next week!

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Decision Made: Peeping Tomcat Wins

OK. I think I have a decision made. I'm still way behind on my prep-work, and the concept is just growing larger and larger, but I think I'm going with the "Miraculous Ladybug" story "Peeping Tomcat." I even created the NaNo profile for the story officially. I guess it helped that I already had a title for it, and "Varekai: A Novelization" is kind of boring, title wise.

For anyone who wishes to, feel free to check out my profile and/or add me as a writing buddy. I'm LycoRogue over at NaNoWriMo as well.

As for how I came to this conclusion? Well, oddly enough it was because I realized I had nothing plotted. Last week I decided to try to figure out which story I was more set to use for NaNoWriMo, so I tried to plot each one out. This way I knew where my holes were, what I needed to focus on, and which story called more to me.

I didn't even bother trying to plot out the Varekai one. I started working on Peeping Tomcat, and I wanted to address two of the main issues I came across with my pantsing version of it. Mainly, if Cat Noir was spying on Marinette for a month, like I originally had, how the HECK did he not spot Tikki sooner, since she never hides while she and Marinette believe themselves alone, and how did Adrien not notice that Marinette has pictures of him basically wallpapering two walls of her bedroom!?

I couldn't really justify him being so laser focused on Marinette to miss those two huge secrets for a solid month. Even a week is hard, but I wanted him to get into the habit and showcase that it's becoming an addiction for him.

So I started plotting things out under the assumption that he was going to discover Tikki about a week after he started spying on Marinette, so I had to up my game of him realizing he might like his classmate.

It was when I had him spot the pictures of himself on day six that I realized my problem, but also realized that this was the story I was going to do next month.

He freaked out realizing that Marinette liked Adrien, and to a near-obsessive level. It's understandable. He's about 15, and even though he's a bit of a minor celebrity within Paris due to his modeling, it's still a bit overwhelming to realize one of your best friends is basically in love with you. Not that he can really judge.

I was originally going to run with it, thinking it would be fun to have him sort through the whole "Marinette likes me" thing as he also starts to realize he likes her back, and she's Ladybug. Then I thought of a scene I already have in the original PT story. Adrien is a bit slow on the uptake, so he hasn't quite grasped that Marinette is Ladybug, but he is starting to see the parallels. When Plagg teases Adrien that he needs to just admit that he likes Marinette, Adrien freaks out that he really doesn't, since he never thought of Marinette romantically until he started to see the LB parallels. Feeling guilty because he thinks he's just projecting his feelings for LB onto Mari, Adrien takes a sick day from school to try to take the time to sort things out. When he decides to talk to Marinette and confess that he was spying on her he's distracted by the fact that Mari, Nino, and Alya are all at his front gate trying to offer him soup that Marinette made. Adrien's father's assistant Natalie turns them away without accepting the gift, and Cat Noir follows the trio back to Marinette's. He overhears how the soup was Mari's idea and how she put a lot of effort into making it to try to make Adrien feel better. Alya convinces Marinette to try to give him the soup again the next day, which perks Mari up as she decides that's exactly what she'll do.

In this scene, Adrien gets another glimpse of Marinette, one of her in public without Adrien causing her to be nervous. It's a part of her that is distinctly not Ladybug-like, and yet it's another reason why Adrien starts to fall for her. He feels like a heel that he's spying on her to find out more about her, and yet she's able to know exactly what would make him feel better without stalking. Little does he know that she is probably way more of a stalker than Adrien could ever be.

Either way, it's a way for him to fall for Marinette that is absolutely not LB-related, helping him realize that he does indeed like her for her, not just because she's his superhero partner. It also makes him realize how sweet of a friend she is to put in that effort. If he knew that she liked him before this scene, then it taints it. She's no longer a friend dropping off soup to make him feel better. She's a girl trying to find an excuse to woo the guy she likes. She becomes kind of Chloe-like at that point.

So, I feel like I have to try to avoid Adrien realizing Marinette likes him until after that scene. Sure, it still sort of taints the effort once he puts two and two together, but it's more of an "ah, the soup makes so much more sense now" after he's already realized his feelings, instead of "well, she does like me, so trying to make me feel better seems natural" before he sorts his feelings out. If anything, finding out Marinette likes Adrien might push him more towards Ladybug again.

OK, but I'm back to the original problem of how does he not notice the pictures of himself!? How does he not spot Tikki?

I couldn't think of a plausible way to avoid those early reveals. Was there a way to have a soup-like scene where he realizes a non-Ladybug trait of Marinette's that makes him realize he likes her for her? Would the soup scene be that tainted? Can he work past it? What about if he discovers she's Ladybug first? How would that effect the other two reveals?

That's when I truly and honestly knew I had no clue what to do with this story. I had three major revelations that Adrien had to go through - he likes Marinette, Marinette likes Adrien, and Marinette is Ladybug - but I wasn't sure what order to reveal them to the little cinnamon roll.

I tried plotting them out with bulleted lists, but it got too complicated. So I went with Plan B: notecards.

This stack has 16 cards. Just ONE possible plot line!

Ten cards are JUST for the Adrienette plot line first.
I'm not even done yet. I still need him to realize Mari likes him.

Each card is roughly one scene within the story. Depending on how it is written, it may be one scene per chapter.... Anyway, the green cards are main plot points that won't change no matter what order the reveals are. These are scenes such as Adrien starting to spy on Marinette in the first place, and how he's grown addicted to doing so. The orange cards are Akuma attacks. I feel like I need to add one more to the stack to finish up the story.... The yellow card is a "special scene" where Plagg confesses his relationship with Tikki. It will be in every incarnation of this story, but the way it plays out might be different depending on the Mari is LB reveal. Finally, all those blue cards are for the scenes specific to "Adrien realizes he likes Marinette first" plot line. I have pink ones for the "Adrien discovers Mari is LB first" plot line alternative, and white ones for the "Adrien finds out Mari has a crush on him first" plot line option.

My fixation with figuring out the order of these reveals and how it would alter the rest of the story had me focused solely on PT for the past week, which made me realize that this HAS to be the story I go with for NaNoWriMo. I'm just too engrossed in figuring out the mystery of Adrien figuring out his mysteries to focus on Varekai.

Now, I have to admit, since the PT "prototype" story has the order as "Adrien suspects he likes Mari, he finds out she's LB, he knows he likes her, he finds out she likes Adrien," I'm partial to keep that order. It still leaves me with the same two questions:

How does he miss the pictures of himself?
How does he not spot Tikki?

I went back to the notebook for those questions.

I basically broke down where Cat Noir was in relation to Marinette each night he watched her. What was Mari doing? What window was CN at? How was the lighting? What angle was CN at compared to the pictures of Adrien? I plotted six of them out. That sixth one was tricky, though. I have him watching a quiet moment with her to showcase how drawn in he became that it wasn't boring to watch her.... read... or whatever. This also meant he had "downtime" to scan her room for more info about her, and thus finding the pictures, or even Tikki.

I then came up with an interesting question: would Adrien necessarily realize Marinette likes him if he saw the pictures?

He's not an idiot. He has proven that he's a great student; a potential valedictorian. He doesn't even need to really pay attention in class to still keep up with the lesson and know the correct answers. He's a smart man. He also is intelligent enough to follow Ladybug's lead without much communication, therefore keeping her plan secret from the Akuma Villain they are attacking at the time.

However, how does he NOT already know Marinette is fixated with him with all the rambling and tripping over her own tongue she does? She's a nervous wreck around him and talks like a bumbling fool, and yet he just shrugs it off as "Marinette being Marinette" - which is kind of the starting premise of my story. There's also the frustration of every fan that he can't figure out that Mari is LB just based on the fact that there aren't that many half-Asian teenage girls in pigtails just walking around Paris. How does he NOT put two and two together? He even feared that "his" Ladybug was actually Chloe, even though Chloe still had her blonde ponytail while she was cosplaying as LB. Does he NOT pay attention!?

I have some theories, as do many fans, but I won't get into that. I just wanted to paint the picture of who Adrien is, as presented in the show. Based on his level of observation thus far, I really don't think it's out of the realm of possibilities that he misreads why Marinette has pictures of him.

Most of the pictures are actually magazine ads ripped out and taped to her wall. Marinette doesn't keep it secret that she not only wants to be a fashion designer, but also that Adrien's dad Gabriel is Marinette's favorite designer. I don't think it's that far fetched to assume that, assuming Adrien only spots a few of the pictures by her sewing station, he justifies the pictures as Marinette studying Gabriel's designs. Especially since it seems Gabriel uses his son exclusively as a model for his teenage line, so there wouldn't be any non-Adrien pictures showcasing Gabriel's work. Adrien could even think of trying to gift Marinette some of his dad's old sketches, should he convince Gabriel to fork them over.

I still have to play with the idea a bit, and I have to figure out, canonically, what pictures Marinette has where to see if it's even plausible. However, I might have taken care of that first issue. Maybe after he started figuring out his feelings for Marinette does he finally spot how many photos Mari truly has of him, letting him know of her crush back. I'm still trying to figure that out too.

That leaves the Tikki issue. I haven't locked that down yet, but I have about 15 days to figure that out. In the meantime, I'm still working on those notecards.

I'm also still working on those Akuma Villains.

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

I still need to figure out the villains for this story, and I've been so preoccupied as to how Adrien figures out what and in what order that I haven't worked any further on the Akumas. The only thing I do know? I'm probably not going to be using Headline after all.

The more I worked on the story the more I realized that, regardless of revelation order, Adrien comes to the same conclusion: Marinette may like Adrien, but Ladybug doesn't like Cat Noir, at least, not romantically. How could he have a relationship with Marinette if his alter ego, and arguably his "true" self, Cat Noir was still left out in the rain? He also can't just reveal himself to Mari - maybe I WILL keep Headline so he comes to that conclusion? - because how will he know if she likes CN for who he truly is, or if she just likes CN now because she knows it's Adrien?

He took the time to decide if he likes Mari for Mari or if he only likes her because she's LB. He decided that he likes both sides of her. He decided that he likes Marinette, and it's because of who she truly is that he loves Ladybug. He needs to know that she came to the same conclusion. He needs to know that Marinette will like Cat Noir for Cat Noir, not just because he's actually Adrien.

All I can think of now is the movie "You've Got Mail." Specifically that movie, not the play/movie "The Shop Around the Corner" it was based off of, mainly because of a main twist the update made. I'm talking about how Tom Hank's character Joe Fox unofficially convinces Meg Ryan's character Kathleen Kelly to want her pen pal NY152 to be Joe.

A little info for any who haven't watched the rom-com, beware of spoilers.

Kathleen and Joe met in a chatroom, knowing only each other's online handles: Shopgirl and NY152. They start becoming email pen-pals while being careful to keep their anonymity. They also start to fall for each other despite both being in a relationship already. The problem is, Joe Fox is part-owner of a mega bookstore chain whereas Kathleen owns a tiny corner bookstore that used to be her mothers. Joe, walking his half-brother and "technically aunt" around the neighborhood where his latest store will be built, comes across Kathleen's store. The two hit it off, until she realizes he's the man running her out of business. They obviously come to verbal blows. Separate from their real world interactions, Shopgirl and NY152 decide it's finally time to meet up. Joe gets to the meet point late and discovers Shopgirl is none other than the "irritating" Kathleen. It takes him a bit to come to terms with this, but then wonders how NY152 could ever make things work with Shopgirl if Kathleen hates Joe for forcing her to close her shop. He decides to stand her up as NY152, and just "happen" upon her as Joe. He mocks NY152, but Kathleen defends her "missing" companion. Joe then purposely tries to "happen" upon Kathleen as much as possible. He slowly charms her into becoming his friend while also delaying a second potential meet-up as NY152. He stays charming as NY152 so that Kathleen still desperately wants to meet him, even if Joe tries to convince her that NY152 isn't worth her time. Over the course of about six months, Kathleen and her boyfriend break up, and Joe does the same with his girlfriend. Kathleen and Joe become even closer, and Kathleen is desperate to meet NY152 finally. Once Joe is certain that Kathleen is torn between her feelings for NY152 and her feelings for Joe, he has NY152 arrange a meet-up. When Joe finally reveals himself as NY152 Kathleen is elated that her two loves are one and the same, uttering the quote "I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly."

OK, so that's the movie. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to translate it into ML, but I like the idea of Cat Noir kind of nit-picking Adrien until Marinette falls for the goofy superhero as well. Once he knows she's torn between the two, he'll reveal himself to be Adrien, and she'll have the same iconic line; elated that her two loves are the same man.

Granted, I'm going to have to rewatch the movie to get a refresher on how exactly Joe woos Kathleen over, but I still think it's a fun idea. An appropriate one, too. It's a bit of a weird role reversal though.

In "You've Got Mail" the idea is Kathleen likes a man whose identity she doesn't know, meanwhile, a man she does know and can't stand becomes a friend and then a love interest. Meanwhile the man she knows is bashing his alter ego to try to get Kathleen to like him instead. In the end, she still wants to know who the man she originally liked was, and was happy it was the man she knew.

This formula would work better as a genderswap with CN and LB. Adrien likes a woman whose identity he doesn't know, meanwhile, a woman he does know becomes his friend and then love interest. The woman he knows is bashing her alter ego - LB - to try to get Adrien to fall for her instead. In the end, Adrien still wants to know who the woman he originally liked was, and is happy to find out it's the woman he knew personally, AKA Marinette.

However.... I am a stickler for the idea that Adrien, in his pursuit to find the woman he loves, discovers Marinette first. Besides, it's a lot easier to realize Ladybug is Marinette than it is to realize Cat Noir is Adrien.

So, we do a bit of a role reversal. Instead of Marinette being like Kathleen and liking a man she doesn't know the identity to - NY152 and Cat Noir - she instead likes the man she knows: Adrien. Instead of the man she knows - Joe and Adrien - being the annoyance who has to woo her, it's the man she doesn't know - Cat Noir - who has to win her over. The same tactics apply, though. This will bring about a lot of the Marichat shippers I think.

It's a bit too big for the existing story, though, and the mood of the story would be different. So, I'm playing with the idea that Peeping Tomcat ends with Adrien knowing all the facts: Marinette is Ladybug, she likes Adrien, and Adrien likes Marinette back regardless of if she's Ladybug. I need to make it a nice conclusion for that story, but leave the readers wanting the full-reveal.

That's where "One and the Same" will come into play. It won't be a Miraculous Ladybug/You've Got Mail crossover per se. Marinette won't be Kathleen, and Adrien won't be Joe. Still, it will be inspired by the movie and it will have Adrien's playful attempts as Cat Noir to woo Marinette until the final reveal of Adrien being Cat Noir, and the two finally being together. I think for THAT story I'll use Headline. She will start off the story to convince CN how dangerous it is that he knows who Ladybug is. It's also a nice way to let the readers know he has this information if they didn't read Peeping Tomcat. However, she could also be a great final villain of PT to convince Adrien to not reveal himself once he knows Mari is LB.

I'm still trying to figure it out. I also need a new copy of "You've Got Mail" so I can really get the feel of the plot. I have it on good old VHS, but that's not much help when I don't have a way to hook up my VCR.... assuming it still works after being in storage for six years.

However I handle the story and apparent follow-up that already sprang up, I at least know I'm doing this next month. I also know what things I really need to crack down on in the next two weeks: how to avoid Adrien discovering Tikki too early, and who the HECK are going to be my villains!?

Feel free to drop me some suggestions below in the comments section. You can also tell me if you're planning on doing NaNo as well and what your concept is. It's fun to see what everyone is working on.