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| Generated by Bitmoji (okay, so I might be exaggerating a touch...) |
It kept me a touch longer than I would have wanted, but I did manage to get that Gabriel and Emilie Agreste story up this past week. With all of my errands I needed to do last Tuesday, I was still writing/editing the story by the time I sprinted off to my writing group. I warned everyone that it was kind of an abrupt opening, and I still needed to go back and add a proper one. After my reading, I had the usual of mostly no one responding, possibly because they don't really know what to say when critiquing a fanfic.
I did get my usual praise from Jack, and my fellow fanfic writer Skarabrae-stone both praised me and brought up a few questions/critiques. So, yay for that.
Ska's main question was "why does Emilie even like this guy enough to sort of chase him!?" Valid question. I paint Emilie in a light that everyone who reads/hears the story seems to find her fantastic, but I purposely painted Gabriel as reserved and a touch boring. He's a recluse so anti-social he barely even spends time with his SON. He's laser focused on Emilie. There should be a reason for that, and those personality traits should always be there.
However, I do understand the question. While I have Gabriel as a sort of diluted version of himself in my story, there's still nothing really for the average person to grab a hold of and say "Okay, I get it; I get the attraction." In truth, I don't even wholly know. I just know that they DO get together, they seemed to have a good relationship before Emilie "vanished", and that most of Adrien's positive traits seem to have been inherited/learned from his mother. She had to be the outgoing one.
Maybe I was inspired by one of the newer Sarah's Scribbles by Sarah Andersen
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| See the comic on her site |
At the time, my only response was "I'll let you know once she lets me know."
It kept me most of Wednesday to ponder it out. In the meantime, I tried to extend their interactions, as Ska suggested, in order to showcase more of Gabriel's personality. Show the reader why Emilie is attracted to this guy. Nothing I did felt organic. It read like I was trying to figure out their dynamic, instead of letting it naturally unfold.
So back to my original write I went - which is why you don't delete anything - and tried again. I simply reread "Stranger in a White Dress", looking at the narrative through Emilie's eyes. What brought her to the club in the first place? Why did she pull Gabriel out onto the balcony instead of just waving him off and fading back into the crowd? What did he say that made her impulsively kiss him? What was she feeling at the time? Why did she wander off with his phone number instead of spending more of the night with him? Why didn't she call him?
I then reread what I had so far of my current story, again looking at it from her perspective. What was Emilie doing at the party? Who did she know there? Did she know Gabriel was there? Was she actively looking for him? What was her thought when she spotted him? Why did she use the opening line she did? Was it a rehearsed line while walking up to him, or was it spontaneous? Did she mentally kick herself for it, or think it was a solid opener?
I think I have most of those questions answered, and while those answers never really showed up in the story, it helped me better understand Emilie a touch more.
It's rough writing a canon character as if she's an original since we literally know nothing about her outside of "married to Gabriel, loving mother to Adrien, was a leading actress for an indie movie, wears an off-white pants suit with a black blouse and star-shaped brooch, has blonde hair and green eyes, went to Tibet with Gabriel just before she 'went missing', and most likely used the Peacock Miraculous before falling ill." She's basically a MacGuffin that is paraded out now and again whenever the writers feel Gabriel needs more sympathy points and/or more motivation to keep being the villain. Even Adrien doesn't really mention or grieve her all that much, unless his grief is needed for his own character progression or a reason for him and Marinette to get closer.
So, I'm trying to do Emilie some justice by building her into an actual character. Hopefully show my thoughts on what she was like, and why Gabriel would go to such extremes to bring her back. As well as how much Adrien is now isolated and abandoned now that she's no longer around.
It will be a slow go, since I've decided to truly use this story as a sort of palate cleanser for whenever I hit a roadblock in my main writing - such as with OatS.
I mean, writing a fluffy romance to help refocus the brain seemed to work wonders for the comic book writer and artist Linda Sejic. Her main comic is a series called Blood Stain. It's a comedic slice-of-life playing with the "mad scientist" trope. You can read it for free on WebToon - which I linked to.
Anyway, while stuck figuring out what to do for her next volume, Linda Sejic read some Greek mythology and was inspired by the relationship between Hades and Persephone. Despite him "stealing her" from her mother, and "forcing her" to stay with him six months of the year because of eating pomegranate while in the underworld, the Hades and Persephone relationship was so revered that the ancient Greeks would pray to THEM for a happy marriage. Hades never strayed from Persephone in any of the myths that she could find. She began wondering "what if Hades didn't kidnap her, what if she willingly went to him and it was Demeter who claimed it was kidnapping because she wasn't on board with her daughter being with anyone; let alone the ruler of the underworld?"
The romance that Linda has teased via random Hades and Persephone posts she's shared over the past year or two is just so sweet. She even named the series of Hades and Persephone artwork Punderworld... because her Hades enjoys puns, it's a pun in and of itself, plus it's nice shorthand for Persephone's Underworld. After seeing the love for her Punderworld work, and how much she enjoyed creating the story, she decided to go ahead and make it an official comic book series alongside Blood Stain. Punderworld is set to come out next month!
I know I've gushed about this comic before, but here's the official pilot for it on WebToon.
Okay, back to my point. Linda said she felt re-inspired for Blood Stain, and that writing the next few bits of that comic has gone smoother since she had this "side project" to redirect towards whenever Blood Stain became troublesome for her. Perhaps my Gabriel and Emilie story "I Don't Care" will be the same way for me; my Punderworld with "One and the Same" being my Blood Stain.
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| Generated by Bitmoji |
Hubby's been playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses, as I mentioned two weeks ago. One of the characters is a bit... over-the-top, flirtatious, and a typical "skirt chaser" who claims he just "falls in love too easily".
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| Character Portrait from Fire Emblem: Three Houses |
Maybe that's how Gabriel manages to survive living with him. Sylvain is almost never in the apartment as he's out and about in Paris most of the day, and crashed asleep in his room the few times he's home....
It's fun when characters evolve for me as I complain in this blog about not really knowing the answers to key questions.
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| Hacker Boy Facebook sticker by Birdman, Inc |
So, for the half-hour left of Hubby's shift post-lunch-break, Omni and I chatted a touch about tropes and plot twists - now that I could FINALLY watch the Overly Sarcastic Productions' Trope Talk about plot twists - and how he could work plot twists into his story via the standard fantasy tropes.
Friday I was able to FINALLY get my story up, and then Omni "invaded" for a couple hours again. We chatted a bit more about his writing and his world build before he headed off to his gaming event.
I then spent the weekend cleaning my apartment and prepping for a mini viewing party for the Steven Universe movie on Cartoon Network yesterday. It was fun having a couple friends over so the four of us - Hubby included - could enjoy it together.
Huge shout out to all of my friends who kept bugging me to watch this show, and a special shout out to Rozsavaria, who provided me with a means to watch the series. It's so good, and the concepts are awesome! YAY!
Well, now that the hype of Steven Universe: The Movie is over, and I've gotten the Emilie and Gabriel fluff out of my system for the time being, I guess next thing on my To Do list is get back to OatS.
If it helps, I DID go back to my outlines yet again to try to tighten things up. I also started researching the 4-Act story structure vs the standard 3-Act. I had randomly grabbed some articles on the topic to help Cyhyr out with her own story last month, but I didn't really absorb the articles myself prior to this past week. Perhaps switching up the story structure formula can help me figure out this story... We'll see as I tackle it some more this week.
While I'm doing that, feel free to check out my new story: "I Don't Care".
As I've mentioned, I don't have much from the show's canon to work with, so it's going to be mostly original content. There may be nods to the show itself - such as Emilie telling Gabriel he'd look good in royal purple; the color of his Hawk Moth costume, or that Emilie wears Lavender perfume, and butterflies are attracted to lavender - but they're more added easter eggs than elements you need to "fully get" in order to understand the story.
I'm going mostly on my own imagination with this. It's probably on par with my X-Future stuff in terms of "mostly original content, although I'm using someone else's world, and possibly borrowing their characters."
Point is, most of IDC will be original content, so if you wanted to check out my fanfiction, but were afraid in the past that you'd get lost since you don't know the show, perhaps this is the story for you.
Also... it's "only" 5000 words long. Yes, ChibiSunnie has already playfully teased that 5000-words, even spread across 2 chapters, is still fairly large compared to a lot of other fanfiction. Still... it's small for MY writing.... Point is, it should be fairly manageable to read.
As per usual, you can check out my story in my normal spots.
Okay, I spent too much time reading through Blood Stain and that pilot of Punderworld when I looked up the links to them, so now it's after noon, so I'll have to wrap this up.
No stats for IDC for this week, but I'll try to remember to share them for next week. I will say though, that I shared IDC on Tumblr both via the AO3 link and then again as I normally do; physically inserting a link into a normal Tumblr post. I still don't have any notes on the AO3 share, but I am now up to 3 notes - 2 likes and 1 reblog - on that second promotion; the one I have linked here. So I think I'm going to continue the way I always have with my story promotions.
Although I JUST remembered that I didn't promote on Twitter again.... I keep forgetting that exists.
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| Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books by Bryan Lee O'Malley |
Okay... it's now quarter after. Until next week!
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| Generated by Bitmoji |
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