The most promising idea I've had has been simply the name: Masketeer. Hawk Moth has a thing for portmanteaus. The villain will combine the French historical militant with the tradition of a masquerade ball.
I thought that perhaps in the eighth chapter, as Cat Noir is fighting his decision to confess to Marinette, he could stumble across a decorative mask street salesman. The salesman could be harassed by Sargent Roger - who has been largely used this season as both a comedic device and akuma catalyst via his giving out absurd amounts of tickets for equally absurd reasons - or perhaps have some careless citizen breaking the salesman's merchandise? I still haven't quite worked out what causes his "negative emotions" that Hawk Moth manipulates with an akuma, nor have I figured out his M.O.
Every akumatized supervillain in the show has either been heartbroken or felt that they were wronged:
There was also Collector, who pretended to be betrayed by his son's recklessness in order to explain his akumatization.Bubbler - Banned from seeing Adrien because Gabriel thought he'd be a "bad influence" on his son.
Mr. Pigeon - Banned from visiting city parks because his love for pigeons compelled him to feed them, which is against the law.
Stormy Weather - Lost a competition to become the local TV studio's Jr Weather girl.
Timebreaker - Had an heirloom watch broken by a careless classmate.
Pharaoh - Was denied the chance to prove his theory that a long undeciphered papyrus scroll was actually a resurrection spell.
Lady WiFi - Wrongfully suspended from school while she was researching who Ladybug truly is.
Copycat - Was told that his crush Ladybug was in a relationship with Cat Noir, whom he thought was callous and undeserving of her love.
Evillustrator - Was yelled at for drawing in class, and then picked on for both his artwork and his crush on Marinette.
RogerCop - Fired from his job as a cop because he refused to either arrest or search a student for a robbery without probable cause.
Dark Cupid - Had his heart broken when his crush not only denied his feelings, but also sent an embarrassing photo of him to the whole class.
Horrificator - Was teased about being afraid of everything.
Darkblade - Lost the mayoral elections, and mocked for trying to "win back Paris" after his Medieval ancestor lost it in favor of democracy.
Mime - Fired from his first lead role after his understudy sabotaged him.
Gamer - Lost the try-out to be a competitor for the city-wide gaming tournament he had been training for all year.
Animan - Was upset that a zoo animal he cared for was being teased by a visitor.
Reflekta - Was forgotten for the class photo after being locked in the bathroom.
Pixelator - A crazed fan banned from interacting with his idol.
Guitar Villain - A rocker being strong-armed into rebranding himself to better fit the younger demographic.
Princess Fragrance - Teased for her custom-made perfume, and denied a visitation with a prince she admired.
Simon Says - Lost a competition show simply because Gabriel Agreste refused to participate.
Kung Food - Lost a cooking competition after his dish was sabotaged.
Puppeteer - A young girl who felt entitled to any toy she wanted, even when her mother told her no.
Vanisher - Was ignored by her best friend as punishment for embarrassing her.
Anti-Bug - Was ignored by Ladybug when she tried to give advice on defeating Vanisher, and then insulted by Ladybug.
Stoneheart - Teased for his crush, and then upset a second time when his crush ran away from him after he accidentally startled her.
Volpina - Was called out by Ladybug for lying, when she was only doing so to try to impress Adrien.
Santa Claws - Beaten up by Ladybug when she falsely believed he was already akumatized and had kidnapped Adrien.
Despair Bear - Fired when his efforts to teach Chloe to be nice resulted in her being unintentionally humiliated.
Prime Queen - Lost her primetime show when Ladybug and Cat Noir prematurely left the interview.
Befana - Felt betrayed and lied to by Marinette, who was just trying to spare her grandmother's feelings.
Riposte - Lost an important fencing match due to Marinette's bad judge call.
Robustus - Told he didn't have real feelings because he was a robot and AIs were not that advanced.
Gigantitan - Was a baby that wanted a lollipop even though his mother told him he was too young.
Dark Owl - Embarrassed by Ladybug and Cat Noir who accidentally outed his superhero secret identity on the news.
Glaciator - Marinette told him she didn't believe his ice cream could magically link couples, a la Cupid's arrow, like he claimed.
Sapotis - Grounded after causing mischief.
Gorizilla - Lost his charge Adrien, who ran away, and accused of being a terrible bodyguard.
Captain Hardrock - Massively fined by Roger for noise violations, boat mooring violations, disturbing the peace, etc., when she just wanted the freedom to do as she pleased.
Zombizou - Failed to show her students that love and kindness will win out in the end.
I know that was a long list, but that way you get what I'm trying to do with these akuma supervillains. Mimicker fits because her being "wronged" was Chloe shunning her and calling her creepy, when all Louise wanted to do was emulate her idol. Sort of a mesh between the Copycat and Pixelator scenarios.
So, if anyone can think of how I can get Masketeer to work, or if you have another potential supervillain idea, feel free to leave me your thoughts in the comments section below. I, on the other hand, will just keep workshopping and hope something shakes loose soon.
In the meantime, feel free to enjoy the third installment in my "Peeping Tomcat" story.
I find it wonderfully ironic that I posted on Friday the 13th, and the overall story is about Cat Noir - a black cat themed superhero. However, this particular chapter doesn't involve Cat Noir at all. Haha, whoops.
Anyway, I don't know if it is the blush-fest cuteness of Adrien interacting with Marinette, the fact that I posted in the morning again instead of the afternoon like last week, or because it was a week when the latest episode of Miraculous came out - as opposed to last week where there was no new episode - but my view count jumped to be closer to the first week's figures. The conclusion of the first 24hrs after posting the third chapter had stats looking like this:
FanFiction has really surprised me. Let's look at one of those stats a bit closer. In the 24hrs after posting the third chapter I received 689 views. Comparatively, the entire week between posting chapters 2 and 3 I had 690 views! I got nearly the same amount of views in just ONE DAY that I got the ENTIRE PREVIOUS WEEK. Same goes with followers. The third chapter added 10 new followers in 24hrs, whereas it kept all week for the second chapter to add 12 new followers. Whoa.FFN: 689 views, 7 faves, 10 followers, and 1 new review
AO3: 270 views, 10 kudos, 0 bookmarks, and no new reviews
DA: 4 views, and nothing else.
Total Results: 963 views, 17 faves, 10 followers, and 1 review
My review was: "I can't wait til next friday for more, I look forward to it!"
The views are still dropping over on AO3. I just don't think I'm writing what's popular over there. For a bit of comparison, I started reading a fanfic promoted by a highly popular Miraculous fanartist EdenDaphne. This story, which started as a one-shot, was first published March of 2017, and was last updated February 2018. It only has three chapters. I don't know how long it remained a one-shot before the author decided to add the other two chapters. It is less than 8000 words long. It also has 19,651 hits, 271 comments, 1678 kudos, and 270 bookmarks. Granted, the first chapter - which was SUPER GOOD, I get the love - had been up for a year, and BaneIsMyDragon has 42 Miraculous stories under their belt, so they are clearly a popular and well-established author. So that could be where all the love comes from. Plus, when other popular artists and writers within the fandom promote your story, it's a lot easier to get both traffic and love.
The big thing that I've noticed with popular Miraculous fics on AO3 though, is that they are AUs, usually with adult versions of the characters, and the characters end up in moderately racy situations. For instance, one I'm reading has the duo as master thieves instead of superheroes, and while no on-screen steaminess has actually happened, Marinette saved Adrien from being caught by lacing her legs around him tight enough to pull him up with her on her zipline, she later has a heavy make out session with Nathanael before her newfound feelings for Adrien makes her stop. In another fic I'm reading Marinette and Adrien, while babysitting for a friend, gets locked in a historical pair of handcuffs and have to wait three days for a specialized locksmith to be able to get them out of the handcuffs. In the meantime, they have to find ways to modestly get undressed and redressed, take showers, use the bathroom, and sleep. It's all mostly innocent since they're still only 18, but it gets a bit more awkward and potentially sensual than my stuff, where I keep them at their canonical 14 years of age. Yet another fic I follow has college students Adrien and Marinette having a complicated relationship because Mari is dating Cat Noir without realizing he's Adrien, or Adrien realizing she's Ladybug. So, they can't go too far due to Cat not being able to take his supersuit off, but there's still some fairly heavy make out sessions regardless. While there are hundreds or even thousands of other examples I could pull up, my last one will be a story I read who had an entire chapter dedicated to make out sessions. It was the aftermath of an akuma attack. More on that later.
So, yeah, as you can see, me keeping as "close to show" as I can may be a good read, and I may get love from those that read it. However, I don't think I'll be widely promoted by other authors/artists, and I don't think I'll become as popular on AO3. Like I said last week, I think my audience is still largely on FFN, as the stats seemed to show.
Going back to those stats, I checked them again late Saturday evening, so about 36hrs after I published the third chapter. I had an additional 55 hits on FFN, 40 on AO3, and 1 on DA. However, that "one hit" may have been me checking in on the story. I've noticed that DA randomly clocks my views on my own stuff....
Anyway, my point is, with those views added in, I ended up getting more views in about 36 hours than I did the entire previous week, and my second week had more over-all views than the first one. Which means I surpassed my highest weekly view count in less than two days! Go me!
So, as of this posting, here are my weekly stats thus far:
The DeviantArt postings randomly got a LOT of love yesterday. Two of the faves were early this morning, and the third one was yesterday. The thing that really kills me though is that out of the six total faves across all three chapters, only two are by the same person - the one who faved today. Which means four other people each loved only one out of the three chapters, and the one person who did love multiple chapters didn't favorite the first one. Bizarre....FFN: 899 views, 9 faves, 13 followers, and 2 new reviews
AO3: 353 views and 15 kudos; nothing else
DA: 14 views and 3 new favorites, but still no comments.
Total Results: 1266 views, 27 faves, 13 followers, and 2 reviews
My latest review was: "I love seeing Marinette through Adrien's eyes. Poor boy is clueless! Loving this!"
If you count both FFN and AO3, I am inching close to 100 followers, so that's really cool. Also, if you tally up all the views across all three sites, I'm over 3000 hits. So that's also pretty neat to me.
But let's get back to that AO3 story with the make out session chapter.
Imthepunchlord is another popular Miraculous fanfiction writer with 64 stories to their name. Another author I found because EdenDaphne promoted the story. The story in question is Curiosity and Satisfaction within a genre known as Enemy AU. The concept for Enemy AU is taking one of the main protagonists, and switching sides so they are an antagonist instead. Usually this is with Cat Noir due to his destruction powers.
Anyway, in C&S, one of the akuma attacks has the original supervillain Aphrodeedee. The woman felt slighted by her husband whom she felt wasn't giving her enough affection. As Aphrodeedee, she used a conch shell to blow a love spell on her victims, who would instantly rush to the first person they find attractive and start making out with them. To avoid being hit by the love spell, Marinette, in her civilian form, asks Cat Noir to follow her lead, and starts making out with him while Aphrodeedee is around. The supervillain believes the two were already hit by her spell and moves on. Originally, this would have been Marinette's cue to break away since she wasn't compelled to keep going, and then run off to become Ladybug. Instead, she's enjoying the activity so much she nearly forgets that she still has to fight the supervillain.
Please note, in this fanfic the characters are about 18. Most Miraculous fanfics age them up to at least 18 so they can have scenes like this....
You can see EdenDaphne's comic rendering of this scene here.
Now, the thing that killed me about this supervillain that imthepunchlord came up with was that it was basically the same supervillain as this past Friday's episode.
Imthepunchlord wrote the chapter in 2016!
The latest episode Zombizou - a portmanteau of the French words for Zombie and Kiss, by the way - has the supervillain upset that there is so much anger and in-fighting among her students, as I stated at the start of this blog, and Hawk Moth promises her the power to "spread the love" so everyone will share hugs and kisses. She then infects her victims by hitting them with a blown kiss. Those infected by the kiss instantly try to kiss the closest person to them in order to "spread the love." In a zombie-bite-like infection, those that were kissed by infected civilians become infected themselves and also race to kiss as many people as possible.
Not exactly the same as Aphrodeedee, and a much more PG version of it at that, but pretty darn close, right!? The story has blown up in the bloggersphere as more and more people - I guess now me included - note this amusing coincidence.
If something similar to Mimicker ever happens in the show, I wonder who would be shocked and giddily spread the word about PT, like what's going on with C&S. Will my story ever become popular enough for something like that to happen? Would enough fans pick up on it if "Mimicker" shows up in a future episode?
Now I really hope something like Mimicker doesn't happen at least until after I post the fifth chapter!
Give me at least two more weeks, Zagtoon! You can have your version of "Mimicker" air after this month.
Okay, okay, so all of that may or may not be remotely interesting to you. You may instead be wondering what HAVE I been doing this whole week if it haven't been writing.
Well, largely re-reading "Ready Player One." Not only have I been re-reading, but I have been taking EXTENSIVE notes on the book, so that when I re-watch the movie I can see exactly what has been changed - which, upon first watch after recalling a story I read two years ago, is a LOT - as well as note any Easter eggs placed within the movie to nod to bits in the book that couldn't be translated and adapted into the movie plot.
I'm on the 14th chapter, and remembered how rage-inducing the 13th chapter is for me.
I've become aware that timeline continuity errors has become a major pet peeve of mine. I need my stories to play out as if they were in real-time for it to feel "real" for me. And the author Ernest Cline - or his narrator Wade - was all over the place in that chapter.
For this bit, be mindful of spoilers....
Leading into the chapter there was already two continuity errors that bugged me. First was that the prologue states that the first key was found in the "evening of February 11, 2045." Then we see Wade first log into the OASIS and his log-in screen says he logged in just before 8am on 2-10-2045; February 10th, for European readers. Wade then describes his school day, which results in him realizing where the key is, and reaching it, before the end of the day. He then notes that he won the key at 11:03pm.... the same day.... which would be in the evening of February 10th, not the 11th as the prologue claims.
The second continuity error that bugged me is that, while Wade does recap his life leading to the day he found the key, that particular day - February in 2045 - is the start of the actual plotline. Yet the back cover of the book states that the story takes place in 2044.
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| Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books by Bryan Lee O'Malley |
First, Wade gets the key - be it on the 10th or the 11th - and notes that "tomorrow" is Friday. The next gunter - egg hunter - can't win the key until the servers reset at midnight. And this is midnight OST - OASIS standard time; also Eastern standard - so it doesn't matter where you are in the world. So the next gunter wins the key, and passes the first gate, shortly after midnight on Friday. Then the third gunter tries for the key that same day, but the servers haven't reset yet, which means they had to wait until shortly after midnight: Saturday morning. Wade comments that he "went back to school that same day".... which would mean he went to school on Saturday when he already established that, even though he goes to school in the OASIS, it's still your standard public schooling of Saturdays and Sundays off.
The next error is when Wade notes that the characters Daito and Shoto managed to find a way to win the key on the same day, without waiting for the server reset. And yet Wade comments that it's been four days since he won his key, and a new gunter got their key each day. However.... the second gunter got their key the day after Wade got his. The third gunter got theirs the next day, which is only two days after Wade. Then Daito and Shoto next.... which is only three days out. Either that, or Wade's speaking hyperbolically, and there was a day between the third gunter and the next two.
Well, regardless, Wade notes that the duo managed to pass the first gate "a few hours" after getting their keys. And yet, just the next page, Wade comments on "that following Friday, the day Daisho passed the first gate..." So, the duo of Daito and Shoto, nicknamed Daisho when referred to together, got their keys and passed the gate on Friday? But it was four days after Wade got his key? Since when is Friday four days after Thursday!?
Wade also commented that he was no longer concentrating in class, but he had enough credits to coast his way through to the end of the year and still graduate. He also comments on how he only had school for "two more months."
It is currently mid-February! Even if you count the entirety of March and April as the "two months", what public school graduates its Seniors at the beginning of May? That's a college time-frame, not a high school one. Most American high schools go until mid-June. How did we lose six weeks!? I mean, it COULD be written off as future schooling ending at the end of April/beginning of May, but I'm pretty sure later in the book Wade comments about graduating in June....
THUS ENDITH THE SPOILERS!
I know I griped about this when I first read the book two years ago, but it still bugs the crud out of me!
Probably why I take the amount of time I do to make sure my timelines match up. I actually had to go back through in one of my revisions of "Peeping Tomcat" when I realized I had one of the characters comment about seeing a friend at school the next day, but the next day should have been Saturday, based on the continuity of when Adrien does his fencing lessons: Fridays. I also realized that I stated in the latest chapter that their stop was ten minutes away, but when I acted out the scene - yes, I act out my scenes to make sure the timing works - the conversation they had was only five minutes long before getting cut off by the train coming into the station. Also, even though the show doesn't seem to really care about sticking with their "five minutes before depowering" rule, I do want to hold true to it. So I also acted out the upcoming akuma attack to make sure everything they do post Cataclysm and Lucky Charm only takes five minutes.
I'm sure no one cares about the attention to detail I verify, but I do, and if there's even ONE reader who is like me, then I hope I make the story more realistic for them.
Okay, this blog is massive now, and I'm over an hour late in posting.
Until next week!
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