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.
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.
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:
So I think I have a fairly decent ending figured out. And I have the opening I mentioned before.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").
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?
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| Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books by Bryan Lee O'Malley |
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
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.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!
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 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.
As for my Tuesday mid-week stats? Let's see how much I improved from “past self”:
Does my heart good.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!
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| Hacker Girl Facebook sticker by Birdman, Inc. |
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
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