A few weeks ago our mutual friend Delaroux was commenting about the latest anime she was watching. Most of the anime she watches centers around a group of students that are all on a team together. Sometimes it's tennis, or swimming, or cycling, or baseball; you get the gist. Now, I have no clue how she finds these, and I feel I'm going to perpetuate the anime stereotype here, but these "sports" animes always seem to have - even if it's just misperceived by the audience - a homosexual undertone. Neghya and Delaroux just out right call them Gay Sports Anime.
Well, in the way that ONLY those two can, they began to joke around about "what if there was a Gay-Sports anime; where being gay was the sport?" They joked about this all day until it wormed its way in to Neghya's head.
She's now obsessed with making this in to an actual thing, even if it's a manga instead of anime.
Well, here's the part that I come in. She was commenting about how she was working on her "gay sports anime" but knew she would need some help fine-tuning. I joked that "while I'm not an expert on gay anime, I am renowned for being the Queen of Angst, if you need."
Neghya and I proceeded to talk about her anime concept for the next two hours!
Granted, it evolved quite a bit. The original joke was "these gay men compete against each other in stereotypical 'gay' activities; like listen to their female friend bitch about her boyfriend, making a fantastic dinner, dance both classically and club, go shopping, and straight up arouse other gay men." This then evolved - back when she was chatting with Delaroux about it - in to "what if the male lead wasn't gay, but asexual? But his parents forced him to compete anyway?"
Well, when I started chatting with Neghya about this on Friday she already had the lead character designed.
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| Meet her baby Chris. Isn't he adorable? |
We figured out tiny bits about the college and how The Game - our working title for it - is structured. Competitors join either the fraternity or sorority that runs the competition. Those that sign up as Game are all in one dormitory: The Game Preserve.
While Neghya was a bit hesitant to do so since she feels the asexual community is almost never represented, she agreed to switch the main character Chris to demisexual. In other words, he's LIKE asexuals in the fact that he has little to no sexual interest and doesn't get aroused by anyone or anything. The difference is that demisexuals DO become aroused when they're with the one person they're in love with. This solitary human being is the only thing that gets their blood flowing.
For my Hey Arnold friends, Helga would be demisexual towards Arnold. For my readers who are Big Bang Theory fans, Sheldon's evolution is becoming less asexual and more demisexual towards Amy.
Neghya still wants to represent the asexuals though, and so she has a side character that might be able to fit the bill. We also came up with a best friend for Chris, although Delaroux and I have completely opposite ideas on who should be the bestie. The guy she thought up is aloof and blunt. He's a nice foil for Chris because he just doesn't care what anyone else thinks and doesn't bother to keep himself groomed. The guy I thought of tries way too hard. He thinks himself a lady's man, but his track record all but destroys that persona. He's eager to please and is a bit over the top, but in a goofy way. I think Neghya might be leaning more towards Delaroux's idea, but I hope my guy still makes it in as comedy relief at least.
We also did some minor work on Chris' love interest. We know what his - yes, Chris falls for a guy - basic look is and what his basic attitude will be. We know that the love interest will start off thinking of Chris as a hated rival, although Chris won't feel the same way at all. In the end, the love interest will start falling for Chris despite himself. We don't have much more than that.
Oddly, the thing we spent the most time on was designing Chris' parents; his reason for bothering to sign up as a Competitor when he's not aroused by anyone. Neghya and I have nearly everything figured out for these two. We have their personalities, their history, how they met, when they married, when they had Chris, what their jobs are, what Chris' homelife was like, and basic character design for his parents. We spent so much time on them, that Neghya jokes these two are the secret and true heroes of the story.
Now, to actually think of NAMES for them....
My week hasn't been COMPLETELY taken over by semi-smutty anime concepts, though. That was just my "slack off" weekend.
The rest of the week I have been slowly chipping away at Please, Let Me Explain.
I believe last week I stated how complicated the edit has become. I have three different versions of the same scene, and I'm trying to find a way to weave all three together. I'm about half-way done so far. Once I'm done with the weaving, I get to go back through with fresh eyes and see if I can't edit it down a bit.
I'm glad I caved and posted that short chapter last week, because this one is getting SOOOO long! I've added about two pages worth so far! The entire story is now at a grand total of about 21 pages, and according to Ronoxym, we're only about half-way through his intended story. Who knows how much longer the story will be once I get my mitts on it!
The last bit of work I did this week was finally beta read another story for ChibiSunnie. I just barely squeaked it in, but I managed to keep up with my New Years Resolution to get beta notes back to the author within a fortnight. She still needs to polish it up, and probably will send it back for another once-over, but I'll be sure to let you guys know when she posts it.
Which reminds me, I totally forgot to post the LAST story I beta-ed for her when she published it at the beginning of the month.
So, for any who might be interested, here is Chibi's Hey Arnold fanfic about Mr. Simmons:
Is She Really A Keeper?
While I'm not sure I'll be able to get it done before the end of the month - therefore making up for my slacking in January - I did start up my second book this week. Hubby and I watched the 2010 version of Clash of the Titans the other day, and it had me really want to do two things: play God of War and read Percy Jackson's Greek Gods. I ended up just reading the book, although I do still want to play that game. Our poor Playstation 2 gets no love with the Wii U and Xbox 360 on either side of it...
I'm not that far in to the huge 450pg book, but it is really amusing. Definitely what I've come to expect from Rick Riordan. Now to see if I can get it done in time to catch up with my "one book a month" resolution. Worse comes to worse, I have a head start on the book for March.
How about you, fine folks? I know Phfylburt is excitedly working on his latest project of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story, but what have the rest of you been up to?
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