When I normally post at noon.
I'm good at this, guys...
Anyway... WRITING!
It had been a while since I last wrote. For writing group last week I decided on bringing up two pre-written Chat Noir scenes to potentially read. The first was a way to abridge the Mimicker attack in “Peeping Tomcat”, the second was the scene I'm working on for "One and the Same" where Chat Noir and Marinette start their friendship using those two identities specifically.
In the end, three other members needed assistance on their WIPs, so I let them take the available time of the meeting. I had already posted all of PT so I didn't really need critiques on the Mimicker scene, and since I don't have the whole manuscript written for OatS I don't know how much of the MariChat scene would stay as it is anyway.
Still, it did kill me a little that I didn't have anything really to read. So I decided to say "screw it!" and just wrote last Wednesday. I had been too focused on my games on my phone, or lingering on Tumblr - which has been super active since we got FOUR new episodes so far this month - or spending about an hour on Duolingo. After switching focus back to reading and writing, I actually forgot to do my Duolingo daily practice twice this week, including yesterday....
All of that - the games, Tumblr, learning Japanese - keeps me occupied, but it also keeps me distracted. Every time it was slow at work I COULD have written something, or read something - considering I spent all of September and most of August without reading anything - but instead I was on my phone. I couldn't allow myself to do that anymore.
At the beginning of September I wrote a one-shot describing my headcanon on where the re-occurring prop "Marinette Lucky Charm bracelet" came from. If you haven't yet, you can read it here.
"Build Your Own Luck"
I read it at Group, and they all really enjoyed it. Then, the following meet-up, I read part of OatS. Adrien was freaking out that there was "no way" Marinette could possibly see him as more than just a friend. Meanwhile, Plagg told Adrien to look at the lucky charm bracelet Marinette gave him and say again that there's no hope.
Since the bracelet is brought up, and Adrien describes it, and how much it means to him, a couple members of my writing group suggested that I somehow tie in the backstory I created with BYOL into OatS.
I LOVED this idea! How great would it be if the audience of OatS also knew the story of Tom making the bracelet for Marinette? How much more significant would the bracelet become if it's revealed that Marinette willingly gave Adrien not only a treasured family memory, but also something that symbolizes paternal love?
Then I froze.
It felt like this sort of chapter should be told through Adrien's POV so the reader could see his inner thoughts as he finds out about the bracelet, but just about every chapter and/or scene I've written has been through Adrien's POV, and I wanted OatS to be an even split between him and Marinette. I want to show Adrien's struggle with knowing who Ladybug is and his attempt to woo her with both his personas. However, OatS is also very much Marinette's story as she realizes she also likes Chat Noir and has to deal with her heart being torn between "two men" only to find out they're actually the same guy. So I really need to diversify the POV of the story.
Okay, so clearly the reveal of the bracelet backstory should be told through Marinette's POV then. That way the reader really grasps the emotion behind the bracelet and can fully appreciate what Marinette gave up when she let Adrien keep it.
But who is Marinette telling about the bracelet? If she tells the reader about it directly then Adrien still doesn't know, and I think it's important that he finds out. She wouldn't tell Adrien directly, because it just seems too heavy an emotional reveal when she can barely thread a sentence together around the kid. Which means she probably is telling Chat Noir, thinking she's just confiding in a friend and not knowing she's letting Adrien know how significant the gift was.
But how to bring it up organically? Why would Marinette randomly start talking to Chat Noir about the bracelet? An item he supposedly doesn't know anything about. Why would Chat Noir ask about the bracelet? How do they get onto the topic of this darn bracelet!?
I couldn't decide. I couldn't figure it out. I tried to let it brew in my head, but I wasn't getting anywhere.
Then I remembered the advice I've been shouting at my friends and fellow writing group members. I remembered the advice I've plastered all over my Tumblr blog. I remembered the mantra I had decided as one of the best pieces of advice I've heard.
I dared to be bad. I just got the shit on paper.
Last Wednesday, I put my phone away and ignored it. I just cracked open my laptop and said, "screw this; let's do it!" I didn't bother trying to figure out the why. I just wrote the result.
Marinette is drawing the bracelet. Chat Noir sees the drawing and is stunned by the sight. Marinette misinterprets the stunned silence to mean Chat Noir thinks it's a ridiculous design, so she admits that she didn't design it, her father did. This piques Chat Noir's interest, and he asks follow-up questions. Eventually Marinette explains the bracelet: why it was made, what each bead represented, how her family bonded, how it made Marinette feel confident, and the fact that she gave it to Adrien.
I never bothered to stop and ask "why is Marinette drawing the bracelet in her sketchpad" or "why is Chat Noir watching her doodle it?" Instead I went with "Meh, I'll figure it out later" and just kept going.
It was kind of liberating, and you can read my full thoughts on the matter on my Tumblr here:
Before the end of the day I had five pages worth of a scene. I've been slowly going back through to edit it a bit, and that actually leads me to the reason I was late for today's blog post update.
For the most part I enjoyed the scene, and I love that at the end of it Chat Noir is teasing Marinette about her crush on Adrien. It was so much fun having Adrien - elated that Marinette loves him - use his alter ego to tease her for not telling "Adrien" how she feels.
There was one part towards the start of the scene that gave me pause though. Marinette talks about the bonding her and her father had, which made Chat Noir stiffen. In my original draft I had Chat Noir show physical uneasiness and sorrow about the thought of other families bonding. It seemed like the default setting to have him wonder what it would be like for his father to do something like make him a bracelet to cheer him up.
Then I wondered if that were true. What if Adrien is smiling in the portrait with his parents not because his mother was in that one, but because he did feel loved by both parents? What if Gabriel was an attentive father prior to his wife's "disappearance"? What if the sorrow isn't because Adrien doesn't know how that kind of bond with his father feels, but rather because he DOES know, and misses that relationship?
This sent me down a rabbit hole. Eventually, I came up with the headcanon that Gabriel never did bond with Adrien, simply because Gabriel was so tunnel-focused on his love for Emilie that he didn't even have enough room left over for his own son.
Friday, I hopped on Tumblr to post that exact thought, but as I was doing so I felt the need to explain myself further. This then turned into a fairly lengthy essay which meandered for a few paragraphs in how Gabriel SHOULD have been written to truly make him a sympathetic villain that the audience doesn't know if they should cheer for. I got back on track briefly, writing more of my essay, before the tail end turned into a sort of headcanon backstory for Gabriel to explain his personality.
It was a jumbled mess, but I knew I had something there. My brain was picking away at SOMETHING there that I couldn't drop. My weekend was fairly busy, so I could only go back and edit small bits at a time. I ended up breaking my essay down into three parts, but even so, the whole thing is about 15 pages long! I think it is something like part one being 3pgs long, part 2 being 5pgs, and part 3 being 8 flippin pages long!!!!
So... um... yeah... I wrote this week. Maaaaaaaybe not on what I "should" have been writing, but still....
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So... again... sorry I'm late. I've been really bad at this since I turned 34...
Anyway, if you are interested in checking out the three-part character study I did on Gabriel Agreste you can find it here:
Gabriel Agreste: A 3-Part Character Study
In the first part of this series I go further into explaining my train-of-thought and how I came to the conclusion I did when it comes to my headcanoned personality and back history for Gabriel Agreste.
In the second part of this series, I go into my actual headcanon. It comes across as a pseudo-narrative story. I go from brief discussions of Gabriel's childhood and home life to studying at university to meeting Emilie through their courtship and early marriage and finish with Adrien's birth and what parenthood meant for both Gabriel and Emilie.
In the final part of this series I wrote about how changing just ONE ELEMENT of Gabriel's personality would be enough to instantly make him a relatable, sympathetic villain that is capable of being redeemed. Changing this one thing also makes the final confrontation between Hawk Moth and Chat Noir/Ladybug even more powerful and heart wrenching. The best part is that changing this one element really wouldn't change all that much with regards to Gabriel's or Adrien's overall character build, nor would it really change the overall story trying to be told.
So far I've had one person like Part 1 within minutes of me posting it, but nothing on the other two parts. Meh, worse comes to worse I have it for reference for myself.
On the flipside, yesterday, when I needed a break from my Gabriel Agreste study, I decided to finally post a headcanon I created over a year ago.
In the season one episode Origins: Part 1, Adrien and Marinette get their Miraculouses and meet their kwamis for the first time. Marinette appropriately freaks out. Adrien on the other hand?
Anyway, I always found it weird that the writers had Plagg respond that he met the Genie of the Lamp. But since my dad read "1001 Arabian Nights" to me when I was a kid I also know the non-Disney version of Aladdin.
For those who don't know: Aladdin had two genies. The Genie of the Lamp, and the Genie of the Ring.
So instantly I thought "Holy Crow! Was that line supposed to imply that Plagg was Aladdin's Genie of the Ring!?" I just couldn't get the thought out of my head.
I decided to finally share my headcanon on Tumblr, and it already has 83 notes. Now, my age-old disclaimer is still true: 83 isn't much in the grand scheme of things. Still, I'm happy that many people saw my headcanon and liked it. In fact, I know I got at least Cyhyr to accept it as her own headcanon. So there's that.
I mean, I pretty much explained everything here already, but if you want to read my headcanon/fantheory yourself, you can do so here:
Now I kind of want to re-read the Aladdin portion of "1001 Arabian Nights" so I can write a Plagg POV fanfic crossover.... I need to stop adding side projects to avoid working on OatS though.
Anyway, speaking of reading... I'm up to chapter 15 in "Leather and Lies." Apparently I'm also a bit of a slacker for it taking me all week to get that far.
Along with the review on iTunes Celeste Straub got last week - just two days after her book came out - she has received a handful more. There seems to be a theme to her reviews though, and so she'd like to send out a warning to any potential readers.
So many people have also written that they can't believe she's a first-time author, and I have to agree. The book is fantastic and it wonderfully walks the tightrope between romance and mystery. Both halves are also so good that I care equally about them.So many readers have told me they ended up staying up all night to finish “Leather and Lies” that I couldn’t help but have a little fun. 😁 So here’s your prescription for a wild ride full of passion, deceit, and danger! You can get it filled at any of the links below.😉 - Celeste Straub
Amazon Kindle and Paperback
BN Nook and Paperback
Smashwords
iTunes
Kobo
Google Play
In contrast, when the party split in "House of Hades" and Rick Riordan had to bounce between the demigods on The Argo II and Percy and Anabeth in Tartarus, I found myself caring almost exclusively about Percibeth. Yeah, the Argo II crew was entertaining and had their own drama, but whenever I was reading about them I was wondering "But what about Percy and Annabeth!?"
This is a man who had captivated me through seven or eight novels already, and yet I felt like the drama leaned a little heavier in one direction.
"Leather and Lies" on the other hand? While Skye is trying to find her cousin Kort I'm focused on that. I'm not really thinking about her romance with Wes. Yet, when she's with Wes I'm not screaming "get back to Kort already!" instead I'm fully invested in their romance. And you're never too far from one or the other. It truly is a great balance. Also, how can you beat closing chapter lines like this one?
The mystery is twisty and gets more and more involved as Skye uncovers more clues. Her leads change and a massive picture begins to slowly form, making the reader try to guess along with Skye what exactly happened to Kortney. It only gets worse when you realize Wes has a mystery of his own, and it may be greatly connected to Kort's disappearance.
I'm not even done with this novel yet and I'm gushing! I get why so many plow through it. I had hard times finding good stop points, but thankfully Straub made sure to work in breather chapters. Ones that coax you to keep going, but, like a well-done TV episode, allows enough closure for you to be able to wait.
So, yeah! I recommend. Go get this novel if you haven't already. And if you have, be sure to tell me what you think below, and don't forget to leave a review so the author also knows how you felt.
Well, I'm now almost three hours late, and I still have other things I wanted to discuss. I guess I'll just wait until next week though. It's good to be back, and I hope to have plenty to talk about next week as well! Now, off to writing! I need something to read at group next Tuesday!
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