The Epic Tale of Two Episodes

Hey, guys, guess what happened yesterday?

If you guessed "it snowed" you win a sticker.

Eh, at least it was on a Monday, and not Tuesday. Yet. Again.

Then again, I don't have writing group tonight, so maybe it just snows on Tuesdays I have that evening meeting...???

As for writing, well.... I'm sort of at equal parts of "did a lot" and "barely had a chance to touch it."

Last week we got two new episodes for "Miraculous Ladybug." The first came out last Tuesday evening and was called Backwarder and the second came out on Valentine's day, and that one was called Stormy Weather 2.

At first, I was a bit bummed that we didn't have a more romance-centered episode, such as Weredad, for Valentine's day, but as Lawbreaker13 noted on Tumblr, there are a lot of parallels that tied Stormy Weather 2 back to the Dark Cupid episode.

Now, before I continue, I want to seriously point out that if you're in the fandom, and want a really good analysis of the episode Stormy Weather 2, you should check out that link to lawbreaker13's review. They even had their analysis pretty much confirmed as the writers' aim via the show's creator: Thomas Astruc saw my post you guys!

I haven't shared it on my tumblr blog yet because I want to re-watch the episode, that way I could throw in some of my thoughts as well. I just haven't had the chance to do a good rewatch, especially since I'm waiting for Wolfhearted. There are a few bits that I'm a bit... unsure of.... with Lawbreaker13's analysis, and wanted to include a sort of counter-argument, but, again, I haven't had a chance yet.

Anyway, back to the parallels between Stormy Weather 2 and Dark Cupid. Here's a real quick recap of the latter episode for those who aren't in the fandom:

In the season 1 episode Dark Cupid, the characters are celebrating Valentine's Day. There's a lot to unpack in this episode, but most of that isn't important for the parallels used in Stormy Weather 2. The long and short is that Marinette's classmate Kim tries to confess his crush on Chloe, only to be rejected and humiliated. He then transforms into Dark Cupid, who has the ability to create hatred with his arrows, as opposed to Cupid's ability to create love. He uses the power to break up any form of affection he sees: romantic or otherwise. He manages to hit Cat Noir with an arrow, and Ladybug can only break the spell with True Love's Kiss. It's kind of a big deal within the fandom. However, the part that's important is this:

While in class, Adrien works on a love poem for Ladybug, but he never actually names the subject of his poem within the writing. By the end of the school day, he gives up on his project and throws it out. Marinette, who had been trying to see what he was writing the whole time, pulls the crumpled paper out of the trash. As she wonders who the love poem is for, Tikki, who, at this point, doesn't know Adrien is Cat Noir, suggests that the lines are describing Marinette. Convinced that Tikki might be right, Marinette brings the poem home. She then decides that she's going to write Adrien a responding poem for Valentine's Day, and actually follows through with it. She even mails it to him. Problem is, Alya distracted her as she was finishing, and she forgot to sign her name. Adrien finds the unsigned valentine, and, since it answered his poem about Ladybug, daydreams that his superhero partner is the one who wrote him back.

Sorry, that was still kind of long, but trust me, that was "quick" for our purposes. So, how does this run parallel with the most recent episode, making Stormy Weather 2 an appropriate Valentine's Day episode? Well, towards the end of their review and analysis, lawbreaker13 pointed out the call-back to the poems.

We haven't had a call-back to them yet in the series, and then, towards the beginning of this episode, Marinette re-reads the poem Adrien penned. The exact scene of Adrien throwing it out, and Marinette retrieving the paper, is even shown in a flashback. Not only that, but it's shown at nearly the exact same time in both episodes. In Dark Cupid, Adrien throws the poem out at roughly a minute-and-a-half into the episode, and Marinette reads the poem out loud about 2mins in. For Stormy Weather 2, the shot of Adrien throwing out the poem shows up just shy of 3minutes in, overlapped with voice over of Marinette reading the last lines of the poem.

Likewise, at the end of Dark Cupid, at 19minutes and 47seconds in, Plagg is teasing Adrien about being brainwashed and doing cruel things towards Ladybug. Adrien is already upset about the whole thing, as well as his failed attempts to let Ladybug know how much he cares for her. In Stormy Weather 2, Plagg is again pointing out the failure of Adrien's wooing of Ladybug at nearly the exact same time: 19minutes and 35seconds in.

Fair warning, the rest of this is going to include minor spoilers for the Stormy Weather 2 episode, so please just scroll past if you want to avoid those.
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Okay, now back to Dark Cupid, Plagg says: "What's the big deal? You've got so many cards from all of these lady fans of yours, take your pick!" He then digs through the mountain of valentines, tossing Marinette's heart-shaped one onto the bed next to Adrien. In Stormy Weather 2, Plagg says: "Why don't you look for another girl to love? One who's actually available?" He then dumps Adrien's mountain of valentines onto his bed. Since this isn't specifically another Valentine's Day special, we're not entirely sure if it's been a full year since Dark Cupid, so this pile could still be from that V'day, but none of the other letters are opened; neither are the gifts. We won't focus on that right now. The point is that Marinette's unsigned valentine to Adrien is sitting on the top of this pile, and it is once again on Adrien's bed.

In Dark Cupid, Adrien picks up the unsigned valentine and reads it at the 20minute mark. He does the same at 19:40 in Stormy Weather 2. Again, nearly identical times within the episodes. Keeping with that parallel timing, at 20:28 in the Dark Cupid episode, an actual ladybug lands on the open valentine, right about where the signature should be. This is when Adrien thinks "maybe Ladybug sent it?" Jumping to the Stormy Weather 2 episode, Nathalie drops off schoolwork from Marinette at roughly the same time. Adrien even comments, at 20:05, that he never noticed before that Marinette's handwriting looks a lot like his unsigned valentine. So, at nearly identical times in the episodes, Adrien tries to figure out who wrote the valentine to him.

All of that said, the reason Stormy Weather 2 makes a good episode for Valentine's Day consists of more than its connection to Dark Cupid. There is also a nice chunk of overall character development and insight showcased in the episode, most of which has romantic undertones. Finally, the bit that most of the fans seem to hate about this episode is the fact that it's largely seen as "simply" a recap episode. At least half of the episode was made up of flashbacks, overdubbed by introspective voice overs. This "flaw" is the last reason why the episode was great for V'day: there were a lot of flashbacks of Marinette pining over Adrien, Cat Noir pining over Ladybug, and even Nathalie's growing affection towards Adrien and romantic feelings towards Gabriel.
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OKAY! SPOILERS OVER NOW! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU SKIPPED THE LAST PART!

For those of you that skipped the above, the spoiler-free long-and-short is: Stormy Weather 2 has strong connections to the previous Valentine's Day episode, as well as showcased Marinette's feelings for Adrien, Cat Noir's love for Ladybug, and Nathalie's affection - both paternal and romantic - to Adrien and Gabriel, respectively. All-in-all, even though it wasn't overtly a "Valentine's Episode", it was still a very appropriate one to air on Valentine's day.

But I spent too much time talking about that episode. Although, as I pointed out in that spoiler section, it IS a good reference point for fanfic writers. If I hadn't already tackled my thoughts on Adrien's feelings for Marinette in “Peeping Tomcat” I would have definitely used bits from this episode for reference points. I'm glad to know that I seemed to have understood Adrien enough to kinda get it right... I'll definitely use this episode for character insight reference when I continue my work on "One and the Same."

Speaking of working on OatS, as I said at the start of this week's blog, I did a lot of writing, and yet barely any at all. It's a weird contradiction, I know.

So we'll start with the "not much at all" bits. I had two zero-days in a row, which, happily, has been a rare occurrence this year thus far. Although Tuesdays tend to only see me writing my blog posts, I've still had full weeks where I didn't have a single Zero-Day, and other weeks where I've only had one missed day. Still others did have two, but they were separated by multiple writing-days in a row. After a more consistent writing schedule such as that, it felt like I really slacked off by not really writing anything this weekend.

I also didn't add to my "One and the Same" manuscript this past week, so that was another bit of disappointment.

I didn't even have a short story up for Valentine's Day like I wanted. Instead, I recycled romantic Tumblr Exclusives and fluffy scenes from PT as my Valentine's Day contribution.

My first one is probably my personal favorite: Stranger in a White Dress. While it had 19 notes on Tumblr when I first posted it in May, it didn't really get any new love when I reblogged it on Thursday. It's a Gabriel and Emilie story, and the fans probably weren't into that for their V'day.

The second story I reblogged just a few minutes later was "Kisses", my Lukanette story I wrote shortly after we were introduced to the character of Luka. Originally, it had 64 notes on it. My reblog for Valentine's Day only added two more - three if you count a comment on it - but it's still more than SiaWD got. Plus, one of those likes, and the comment, were by the lovely ChibiSunnie.

You see, my writing is almost dauntingly long, in case you somehow didn't notice....

So, the massively time-crunched Chibi doesn't really get the chance to read my writing anymore, especially since it's in a fandom she's not a part of. She did tell me that she enjoyed being able to finally see some of my more bite-sized snippets of writing so she could appreciate what I add to the ML fandom.

Chibi: Awww you write such sweet romance stories for this fandom! ^_^

Chibi, you, darling, are so sweet for saying so, and for taking the time to read something from a fandom you're not a part of.

Figuring Valentine's Day was also a good time to try to bring more readers to PT again, I did a bit of promotion as well. I swiped a small snippet from chapter 4 of my story, and posted it as a sample scene for V'day. I hoped the Love Square gooiness would be more of what The People wanted for their holiday, and that it would lend itself to bring some more traffic to my story.

So, to get that Adrienette fluffiness out in the world, I sampled the movie pseudo-date they had: A Movie Date

It's received 4 likes. Not the traction I was hoping for, but it's still 4, presumably new, readers. Plus, the excerpt was still nearly 3000 words long, so it may have been too much for people to read on Tumblr. Perhaps they just used the link to AO3 and added it to their Read Later lists. Who knows?

Likewise, "Stranger in a White Dress" was just over 2000 words, whereas "Kisses" isn't even 800 words long. Plus, "Kisses" was in a ship a lot of people enjoy. So, I guess it makes sense what is and isn't getting notes on Tumblr if it's broken down like that.

I did receive one new Tumblr follower on the 14th, which could be because of my writing, but it could also be because of what I reblog, or even my comment about Chloe being surprisingly absent thus far this season. That observation has garnered me 30 notes between the likes, reblogs, and comments. Regardless, it's one more follower, which means one more person to see when I post new writing. I'm actually up to 96 followers on Tumblr. It's still small peanuts, but it IS nearly 100 people who make up a potential readership base. I'll take it.

Especially since I gained 7 new followers this past week. As I mentioned, one started following on the 14th, but I also added 4 more since the 15th. Again, I have no clue what it is about my Tumblr blog that attracted them enough to want to follow me, but it's nice to know that I'm slowly gaining more and more of a fanbase, as it were.

It was because of this growing fanbase that I figured I'd try to do another promotion attempt for PT.

As I commented above,

Adrien, at the end of Stormy Weather 2, notices that Marinette's handwriting looks like it matches the unsigned Valentine. Except he then decides that Marinette just thinks of him as a friend since she's obviously crushing on Luka, so the Valentine couldn't possibly be from her. It was just someone who has similar handwriting. GAAAAAAH! This kid is frustrating!

Anyway, whether you read the spoiler box or not, the point is that the fandom is currently caught up with how Adrien is SOMEHOW completely socially blind still. It's frustrating, but in such a good way, for me, at least. A lot of people are getting irritated by how much the Love Square is being drawn out with virtually no advancement in the relationships. However... I personally think there have been A LOT of growth in at least the LadyNoir and Adrienette corners of the Love Square, but people grow affection - true, long-lasting, deep affection - towards each other SLOWLY. I'm loving how much it's dragged out. At least it hasn't gotten as annoyingly frustrating as the Lois and Clark Will-They-Won't-They from "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman", and I hear some of the worst "Will-They-Won't-They" was from shows like X-Files or Bones. Love Square drag-out is nothing compared to the live action shows aimed at the 18+ demographics.

Point is, I figured I'd attempt to shamelessly cash in on the "Adrien is an idiot!" discussion stemming from Stormy Weather 2, and, in part, Backwarder. I again grabbed a snippet from PT - this time "only" 1530 words long - and shared it to Tumblr.

I think I did a much better job at bookending the snippet to encourage readers to go to the full story this time though. For example, compare the first snippet for A Movie Date vs the snippet Confusion.

For those who may not be able to read the above image, it says:

I can't let Valentine's Day close out without some Love Square fluffiness. So how about a pseudo-date between Adrien and Marinette (with a sprinkling of DJWifi) from my story “Peeping Tomcat”?

I then include a few paragraphs to try to entice people to read, before dropping a "read more" link so it's not this epically, and possibly annoyingly, long post people have to scroll through on their dash. At the end of the snippet, hidden within the "read more" is this closing.

Again, in case you can't read/see the above picture, this is what it says:

*Excerpt from chapter 4: Normal. To read the full chapter, you can check it out on AO3 here. Or, if you prefer, you can find it on FFN or DA.

If you'd like to read the story from the beginning, you can check it out on AO3, on FFN, or on DA.

It's not.... bad? But it also could be better. So when I promoted the snippet from the seventh chapter of PT, I switched up the formatting to this.

1. I started off by commenting on the big discussion being had around the fandom, and how it made me think of my story, complete with the link to the story from the beginning. This way, if people didn't want to read on Tumblr, they had access to my story on AO3 right away.
2. I then gave a summary for PT, as well as the status - that it's complete, has 17 chapters, and is over 84,000 words long - the ships showcased, and the rating for the story. I even made sure to off-set this information to make it easier to read. 
3. I then finished with apologizing for the shameless plug, called out what could be the appeal of that particular part of the story, linked to the chapter the snippet was from - again, in case people just wanted to read it on AO3 instead of Tumblr - before closing out my intro with a call to the main character focused on in the snippet: Adrien

Once more, I had a line break to separate the intro from the story itself, dropped a couple of potentially enticing paragraphs, and finished with a "read more" link so I wouldn't flood people's dash.

At the end of the snippet, I also switched up the formatting to one I think worked out better.

1. I put the non-story elements promoting where to find more of my writing in italics. I hoped the italics would draw eyes to it, offset it from the story outside of the simple line break, and to make the non-italicized, bold links stand out more. 
2. I had a sort of call to action with the opening question of "Want to read more?"
3. I provided only one link - to AO3, the site most of Tumblr users seem to prefer - to the rest of the chapter to avoid overwhelming people.
4. I used another call to action, as well as a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment about reading the story from the start, before promoting where to find the story off of Tumblr.
5. I have commas separating the different links, and off-set both them and the link to the chapter itself on their own lines. It helps draw the eyes and make the links stand out more.
6. I finished with a thank you to the readers who made it to the end of my long post.

I'm not sure if these format switch-ups helped at all, or if the subject matter was closer to what people wanted to read, or if it was simply because it was a shorter piece, but I did get more of a response from my "Confusion" snippet.

Back-tracking to "A Movie Date," that snippet has had 4 likes. One from Chibi, who also said "Awwww this was really cute! ^_^"  To which, I responded that she has officially read part of PT, and can stop feeling guilty about not getting to it yet.

Speaking of, Chibi has a few new short stories up on her AO3 account. Sadly, I've been a bit of a slacker and haven't gotten to read them yet, but YOU can while Chibi is waiting for me.

• Aren't You Happy for Andi?
• Fandom: Andi Mack
• Summary: That moment when Cyrus realizes he likes Jonah Beck.
• Word Count: 548
• Sorano and the Truth
• Fandom: Doukyuusei (aka Classmates)
• Summary: Sorano finally comes out to Fujino.
• Word Count: 2953
• Dear Manabu/Dear Sorano
• Fandom: Doukyuusei (aka Classmates)
• Summary: Sorano and Hara write letters to each other to be opened up 10 years in the future. This is what I imagine the "Sorano/Manabu 10 Years From Now Love Letters Kuji Prize" might say.
• Word Count: 264
• Hara and Getting Older
• Fandom: Doukyuusei (aka Classmates)
• Summary: Hara starts to worry about how him aging first will affect his love life with Sorano.
• Word Count: 1360
• Please Don't Leave Me
• Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
• Summary: Touya takes care of Yukito after finding him partially transparent and passed out in his yard. This expands the White Day chapter in the Sakura Card Arc.
• Word Count: 1681
• Song for Sajou
• Fandom: Doukyuusei (aka Classmates)
• Summary: Kusakabe writes a love song for Sajou and performs it for him in hopes it will help them get back together.
• Word Count: 2849

Sadly, most of those were written MONTHS ago! The first two were written in November, the next one was in December, "Hara and Getting Older" and "Please Don't Leave Me" were shared in January, and only "Song for Sajou" was posted this past week.

Chibi, I am SOOOOO sorry I've been slacking off on sharing your stories, or even reading these short tales. But let's give this girl some love. I HAVE read snippets of a lot of these as she asked for some advice - be it beta reading, quick polishes, or figuring out which rating to give her stories - and I greatly enjoyed them, even if I wasn't in the fandom. So give them a shot. They are a beautiful representation of sweet, (mostly) innocent, gay love. Something that doesn't seem to be showcased enough in mainstream media, at least here in America, so I'm glad fanfiction writers pick up the slack.

Anyway, getting back to my promotions on Tumblr, as I said, the snippet of the Adrienette pseudo-date received 4 likes. I also received a new story favorite for PT two days later. I'm not sure if the two are related, but I'm running with it.

On the 17th I then shared the snippet from chapter 7: Confusion. That short received 14 likes in comparison to "A Movie Date." I also received my most recent follower on Tumblr shortly after I shared that snippet. Again, I don't know if the two are related, but I like the chances. I also received a new author favorite on the 17th over on FFN. Still not sure if it was thanks to my promotions on Tumblr, but it made me feel good to see that alert in my email.

Sunday, the 17th, also brought me a new comment on PT's posting over on AO3:

kitdubhran: Just caught up on this. Loved the conclusion. Can't wait to see more of this, whenever you can post it. ❤️❤️❤️

Lastly, I've received two new guest kudos on AO3 for PT over the past two days. So.... maybe the shameless plug worked? Maybe my story got out to more people, slowly but surely?

I am planning on posting more promotions for PT the closer I get to publishing "One and the Same." That way people can have a more seamless flow into the sequel. Get that hype up. I need to actually WRITE OatS though....

Instead... well.... I've talked a lot about the latest episode Stormy Weather 2, but I haven't said much about Backwarder. It is one of my favorite episodes for multiple reasons. We get to meet important people for both Master Fu and Kagami. We get some more of Master Fu's backstory. There is character development. There is romance. There's also a sort of comedy of errors, which I'm a huge fan of.

Sane Man in an Insane World is a hard comedic trope for me to get behind; I tend to get frustrated at the collective stupidity, which is why I nearly hurled "Big Trouble" by Dave Barry across the room as I got to the closing chapters. Still loved the book, but that trope annoys me. Comedy of Errors though? I'll eat that up all the time. Both tropes center around at least one person trying to navigate a situation they should never expect to be in, and have to explain themselves when they should never need to under normal circumstances. Comedy of Errors, though, focuses on how the misunderstandings could still be logical even with intelligent people, whereas Sane Man in an Insane World is mostly frustrating to me because of the stupidity of everyone. The exceptions are stories like Idiocracy, because at least then I know what I'm getting into, and can enjoy the comedic trope.

Anyway, Comedy of Errors. The error itself is kind of a major plot point in Backwarder, so I won't even attempt a spoiler box about it, because it's too hard to sum up for anyone skipping over spoilers for the show. What I will say is that it brings up a LOT of questions regarding Adrien's POV, which isn't shown much that episode.

Naturally, I wanted to give my take on Adrien's thoughts about the episode. It was supposed to be simple. It was supposed to be quick. It was supposed to be done and up on Wednesday, while the episode was still fresh in everyone's mind.

As per usual with my stories, I'm running super long on this concept as the insight delve went deeper than expected, and so I'm STILL writing the darn thing. A Tumblr Exclusive one-shot that was only supposed to be a thousand words or so is now up to about 4500 words.... and counting. I'm maybe 2/3rds of the way through the story I want to tell.

Whoops....

To be fair, I didn't have the time to write on Sunday or Saturday because we were slammed at work, people invaded after work, and when we didn't have house guests, I ended up passing out on the couch. Hubby and I also had nights in together for Valentine's Day. It's been a fairly booked week.

I've also elongated my writing process by pausing to do research I wasn't expecting I needed to do. Like transcribe a couple of scenes - only to find them on Tumblr the next day as subtitled gif sets.... - measuring the height difference between Adrien and Kagami, timing out where everyone is and when throughout the episode, analyzing the location of the bathroom on the animated train car shown in the episode, timing the length of a train ride from Paris to London, figuring out the logistics of a hand-written prescription, and designing wedding formal wear. That last one was probably the trickiest for me.

Once upon the time, roughly between the ages of 6 and 10, before I truly understood my passion for writing, I fancied myself a fashion designer. I loved using different design kits to create new clothing styles. I had about four different kits that I would rotate through. I'd also cut out bits and pieces from old magazines in order to paste together an outfit. While I loved just about everything I designed, I was apparently the only one who believed I had an eye for fashion. It didn't stop me, though. What finally did was the realization that I had to sew my own prototypes, and I was NOT into that. Me and sewing are not good friends....

Well, along with my desire to design, my eye for design also kind of died. Although, as I noted, most would argue I had no "eye for design" to begin with. As an adult I might be inclined to agree.....

Anyway, my point is, whenever I end up designing an outfit for an original character, or create a new look for an existing character, such as when I designed Adrien's Chat Noir Appreciation Festival look for PT, I tend to spend hours looking up fashion photos to see what pops out at me.

Not only do I have to try to piece together an outfit I think looks good, but I have to compare it to the design of the characters to see if it would work on them; if it's a style they'd wear. Finally, I have to figure out how to DESCRIBE the outfit so you, the reader, can understand what it looks like without the help of an actual visual reference.

I'm beginning to hate describing clothing as much as I hate coming up with names and writing repetitive action scenes such as fight scenes, chase scenes, and.... shall we say "sexually themed" scenes. I hope it's all worth it, though, and that someone is just as inspired by my fashion designing for this one-off as they were with that festival scene in PT.

I still need to finish THAT story though. This is definitely going to be my February "one new story a month" goal, but that requires me to finish WITHIN FEBRUARY. So I should probably get back to that story so I can share it with you guys by next Tuesday.

AAAAAAAND this blog post is stupid-long, and HOURS late. So... Catch you guys next week.