Oh, and I also started coming up with chapter titles! Simple one-word ones. Yay, naming things! I can do it! Thus far I have chapter one "Mistake" and chapter two "Itch". I think I have a title for chapter three, but I want to finish the chapter re-write first to make sure it still applies. As of right now it's "Contrast", but I don't like that title as much as I like the others.
Also, I have a title for the pinnacle chapter of this thing, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it. I'll have to wait until I get to editing that chapter and see if it still fits. As of right now, though, the title of the chapter I posted as a teaser preview is "Truth."
Whoot, look at me go with this titling thing! Ironically, this was the week that this writing meme made another circuit around my end of the internet, both on my wall and in the fanfiction group I'm a part of.
That's it. That's all the writing progress I have to tell you. I have the second chapter done as far as it's going to be without outside help, I edited a bit here and there throughout the rest of the story, and I started re-writing the third chapter last night. And I'm apparently good at titles now....
Such a great week.
I guess it's better than no progress, though, so there's that.
Most of the week was spent finishing up "Ender's Shadow" finally. Can mark that one off of last year's reading challenge. I then had two days of doing virtually nothing. I'm a bit burnt out in January, so I spent the time playing some simple online flash games or watching TV.
I need the sun to come back and the cold to go away. I'll be more likely to come out of hiding from under my blankets then. Might be productive.
The reason I didn't even read during those two days is that Hubby apparently lent out his copy of "Ender's Game" and we never got it back. So I needed time to steal away to the library. Now that I have the library's copy, which is split in the middle and feels like it's going to fall apart any minute now, I've been breezing through it. Orson Scott Card was a faster-paced writer back when he wrote "Ender's Game," considering the story was originally a short that he was convinced to expand into a full novel. I'm already six chapters in, which probably doesn't sound like a lot.
Only getting six chapters into a quick-read book when I've had it since Saturday afternoon is probably why I'm amazed that others can read 100 books a year when I can barely get in a dozen. To be fair, though, I tend to read slow to fully absorb, and flip back to re-read something that was purposely vague at first, but is cleared up later, and I mostly read only during lunch breaks at work. Add in the fact that I'm also both taking notes on "Ender's Game" as well as comparing to my notes on "Ender's Shadow" in order to get the full picture of the story Card is trying to tell, and it bogs the whole thing down.
Still, all of this note taking and immersion into the story just reminds me why, when Hubby had me read "Ender's Game" my senior year of college, I added writing a film adaptation of it to my bucket list. I had to later cross that off simply because Card himself wrote an adaptation of his own story, and who can really do better than the author himself? Granted, the movie was tweaked after he submitted his script, so it still had more inaccuracies than it probably already did, and now I would want to tell the story kind of straddling both "Ender's Game" and "Ender's Shadow" to tell Ender's and Bean's story at the same time. Still, I don't think people would really want a remake of a movie when the original author's adaptation wasn't as beloved and renowned as it probably should be.
I'm going to have to re-watch the movie once I'm done with the book to remind myself what was good and what went wrong with it....
Finally, after a long hiatus to try to catch up on production, the latest Miraculous Ladybug episode was released this weekend, and it was already posted to YouTube. I do feel guilty about watching it there, but I also plan on re-watching everything multiple times once it comes to Netflix, and I already know I'm going to be buying the season DVDs at some point. So this small indiscretion of not waiting for the official American release is fine, right?
Anyway, this whole episode was pretty much all MariChat.
Quick refresher. In the show Miraculous Ladybug the two main characters are Marinette and Adrien. Marinette is secretly the superheroine Ladybug, and Adrien is secretly her partner Cat Noir, or Chat Noir if you want to be authentic. Ladybug and Cat Noir don't know who the other truly is. Because of this, there's a love-square between the two of them.
Marinette loves Adrien who loves Ladybug. However, since Ladybug is Marinette and in love with Adrien, but she doesn't know that Adrien is Cat Noir, Ladybug dismisses Cat's advances. Meanwhile, since Adrien doesn't realize his shy and clumsy classmate Marinette is actually his love Ladybug, he just thinks of her as a good friend.
HOWEVER, the second season is definitely stressing the fact that Adrien DOES have a crush on Marinette, but is blinded to his own crush by his love for Ladybug, having that consume him so much that he doesn't even realize his other feelings.
Okay, another quick refresher on the ship names now that the love-square is explained.
Ladrien shippers want Ladybug with Adrien. It's minimal, since Ladybug tries to stay professional, especially around citizens, but there were some scenes in the first season, and another partial episode in the second season. While this seems to be the "win-win" ship - Adrien gets his love Ladybug, and Marinette gets her love Adrien while being her confident Ladybug self - it also gets the fewest screen time because of Ladybug's professionalism would mean she wouldn't do anything.
MariChat shippers actually want the two versions that have no interest in each other to change their mind. Since neither realizes that they're with the one they love, neither would be nervous around the other, and so a true romance could bloom. Also, people think this is the most "sinful" ship, so it tends to get the most love. There were a few scenes in the first season for this ship, but the episode I watched this past weekend was pretty much full of MariChat potential. More on that in a moment.
Finally, there's good old Adrienette, where the shippers want those two crazy kids to just hook up in their civilian forms already so they could actually do things like go on dates. If I had to chose, I'd say I'm an Adrienette shipper, but I see the other three leading to this end result. I'm cool if any of the other ships "win" and become canon first, because in the end the two will realize who each other is, and Adrienette will be the end result.
Now, that being said, I'm not the only one who realizes that if one ship is achieved then they're all achieved, since it's the same two people. Every shipper understands this, but it's not that simple. First of all, just because one ship showcases mutual romantic interest doesn't mean they realize the secret identities of each other, and/or it doesn't mean that all four scenarios will have mutual romantic interest shown. In fact, one ship getting steam may mean the death, or near death, of others. If Ladybug starts falling for Cat Noir, she may start giving up on Adrien, and the Ladrien and Adrienette ships will tank until she finds out that Cat and Adrien are the same guy. Same if Adrien finally realizes his crush on Marinette. He might give up on Ladybug after constantly getting rejected, and thus LadyNoir and Ladrien will die off.
It's a delicate balance to keep all four ships going, and the showrunners are doing a great job at it.
But this ninth episode this season! So much MariChat potential, but it also has some LadyNoir, complete with Ladybug blushing a bit at Cat Noir's sincerity about his feelings. This is where the infamous "balcony scene" shot originates from. The one that MariChat fans have been waiting for since the shot was teased months ago.
It does give me a lot to work with, though. I got to see how Cat Noir and Marinette would interact without an Akuma attack to worry about. It shows me what Adrien does as Cat when he's not battling. It lets me see how Cat can keep missing Tikki floating around Marinette. It also gives me more brooding Cat.
I mean, look at this face!
Now to use this new info to motivate me to write. I was able to get more inside info on Cat. I can work with this. I just need the discipline to do so.
Also, there is an interesting conundrum that came up with this season. Thus far, there hasn't been anything in the new season that has really countered what I had in my story already, which means I could have it be considered "season 2 compliant" even though I wrote it before watching the second season. HOWEVER, there is ONE key thing that would make it non-season 2 compliant. In one of the second season episodes Tikki and Plagg get to see each other, which means they know who Ladybug and Cat Noir truly are! They're not saying anything, though.
Problem is that Plagg not knowing that Tikki was with Marinette is kind of a big thing in my story. So, do I go non-second-season compliant even though it could still fit? Or do I just ignore that one episode so I could include things like Adrien and Marinette's dance at Chloe's party, or Adrien's gift to Marinette for her birthday, or even anything from this past episode. However, I don't know how compliant I'd be with this either since both Marinette and Ladybug admit to Cat Noir that she likes someone else, but didn't tell him who, obviously.
How about partially compliant? Adrien remembers the dance at Chloe's, but hasn't finished making Marinette's birthday gift yet? Slide it in before episode 4 and go AU from there? Thoughts?
How about this for a thought: stop procrastinating and go write! I like that one....
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