How Marinette's Song Came to Be

Sorry I lied, and now this is a day late. Like... super late. Like, it's now night, late. I was out of the house more-or-less from 1:45pm until 7pm yesterday running errands, then I had dinner, then Hubby wanted to play his "A Song of Ice and Fire" miniatures game again, which lasted until 10:30 or so. Then some household chores.... Then, today, I've been at work.


Anyway, late though it is, as promised, here's my second blog post in order to help make up for missing last week. This way I can get a bit more detailed in the actual writing progress of Marinette's Song and my Fluff Week stories. I can also truly gush over those other stories I've read the past week or so.

Thing is, though... seems I had a LOT more to talk about than I thought in regards to the writing process behind coming up with my Lukanette story. So... uh... this entire epic blog post is JUST about Marinette's Story. 

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Edited by LycoRogue

At least you know what you're getting into, right? If you really don't care about my rambling about my writing process, and the readership stats for the story, then you can go ahead and skip over this post.

HOWEVER, I do also gush about the Lukanette Secret Admirer story written for me by CaptainMalcolmReynolds, and it would be a shame to miss that. If you want to just skip down to that bit, scroll until you see this Bitmoji:

My review of Or I Could Just Kiss You... is only about a paragraph after that.

For those of you that are sticking around for the whole ride, I hope you've gotten your bathroom breaks in already....

Luka screen grab from episode "Felix"
Marinette screen grab from episode "Silencer"

As I've mentioned in the past, I instantly loved the concept of the prompt justknitstuff had submitted for her future Secret Admirer to use.

Supernatural AU! And not the show SPN. Luka is descended from sirens. His music tends to put people under a spell (not the throw yourself to death kind though), so he goes to his favorite charm shop from the cute witch that makes charms to dampen the affect when he plays. Pre-relationship so while Luka is still calm and cool, you can tell he's still stupidly love sick.

I don't know if that's what came across in the end, but I hope it is.

Also, to be fair, I also enjoyed her other prompt except for two things:

Older Viperbug and Lukanette. Luka and Marinette are trying to start a family but second Hawkmoth makes it a little difficult. Everyone knows each others identity because knowing who they are makes them a stronger team and trust each other more. They work as one big team, but also in little groups. Luka takes charge of the Zodiacs and is kinda Marinette's second-in-command, cause Adrien knows Luka is a little better at making plans. I'm ok with nsfw and other background pairings. Second Hawkmoth can be anyone.

The issues I had with that Aged Up story? Well, for one, as much as I ADORE Lukanette, and think they will be great together, and would not mind if they're End Game, I'm still a die hard Love Square shipper. I will delightfully consume End Game Lukanette like it's going out of style, but I just can't bring myself to write it. Same with my second issue: Luka/Viperion becoming Ladybug's second in command, essentially demoting Adrien/Chat Noir. I am such a Chat Noir stan that is constantly fighting to remind people (the show's writers included) that Chat Noir is NOT Ladybug's sidekick. He is an EQUAL partner, as presented in season 1.

They are less Batman and Robin and more The Wonder Twins. Sure, the female is arguably more powerful or more effective, but you still need both of them to properly function.

Look! They're even "fist bumping" here!
(Just ignore the whole sibling thing;
it's not a perfect analogy)

Granted, it was further explained to me that it's more of a Sailor Moon Inner Senshi vs Outter Senshi, with, I guess, Chat Noir still being the Tuxedo Mask-like partner in battle (ignoring that TM never really actually battles, does he?), and Luka being in charge of the Zodiacs much like Sailor Pluto and the Outter Senshi??? Either way, it's a complex dynamic that definitely would not be fully explored in time for the Valentine's Day deadline.

Needless to say, with my resistance to the Viperbug story, and my instant draw to the idea of Luka being part siren, I was super excited to work on that AU story.

I wanted to be careful, though. I actually have Wiccan friends, so I instantly knew that I didn't want to have Marinette be a traditional "Hollywood witch" and instead try to ground her more in Wiccan practices.

Dear LORD was that a terrible idea. I'm Roman Catholic. I've never witnessed Wiccan practices, and I only vaguely know them via researching random sites on my own, and my friends casually talking about their practicing. I have the disclaimer down on each chapter, but I'll say it again: I hope I didn't offend any Wiccans, nor did I horribly misrepresent the religion. I hit up about a half-dozen sites researching different elements of the ritual I had Marinette perform. I don't know if every site I hit up is 100% accurate, nor do I know if the information I learned is interchangeable. For all I know, I created a ritual that looks like the Wicca equivalent of mashing up Baptist and Catholic Masses and calling it a standard Methodist Mass.

I was going to ask my Wiccan friend to read the story for me and critique the ritual at least, but as the story got longer and longer I felt guilty trying to ask her to beta. So I went in relatively blind.

Regardless, here are the sites I used:

• I wanted to include a snake somehow to give a nod to Viperion, so I started off searching about snakes and Wiccan or Pagan rituals/symbolism. The two main sites I used were:
• The Snake on Witches Lore
• Serpent Magic and Symbolism on Learn Religions
• In the end, I took most of the info from Witches Lore, because it all fit Luka near-perfectly. Especially the Wood Snake description, most of which Marinette relayed over in the story itself. She only missed: "Wood Snakes... usually sort difficulties out without consulting with others."
• Next, I needed Marinette to have a way to figure out Luka's ancestry, so I turned to Grove and Grotto's gemstone chart to find the best stones to focus energy during the interview: Gemstones and their meanings
• I got a nice mini-chuckle out of the appropriateness of Marinette using serpentine... cuz, ya know... serpent.... snake....
• I needed to figure out what Marinette would have to symbolize the elements
• So first I researched the elements in Wicca: The Wiccan Elements on a site simply called wicca.in
• Then I researched the trees in the Place des Vosges: What you should know about Place des Vosges, Paris on French Moments
• Turns out, the most common trees are lime and chestnut.
• I also researched the most common stone in Paris: Lutetian Limestone on Wikipedia
• Now having sorted out Luka's spirit animal guide, and figuring out which element guides him, the next portion was figuring out how to bind his powers. For that I looked back at the site Learn Religions: What is Magical Binding?
• From there, I focused on Norse Runes
• I also narrowed down which Rune I wanted to use: Elder Futhark – Rune Meanings on The Rune Site
• I was trying to decide between: 
• Thurisaz (Thorn (or Giant)) - This rune represents the ability we have to resist unwanted conflicts in a passive manner. It is a rune of protection and can tell us of a possible change that would have otherwise come without warning. You can use the protection aspect of Thurisaz as a defense against adversaries.
• Ansuz (Mouth (or Divine Breath)) - A rune that symbolizes stability and shows us order. It is also a rune that indicates intellectual activities and directly represents the divine breath of all life and creation.
• Perdhro (Dice Cup (there are many variations)) - This rune reminds of the uncertainties in life and represents freewill and the connection of the restrictions we have due to our circumstances. It is viewed as a rune of memory and problem solving.
• Elhaz (Elk (or Protection)) - This is a rune of great restraint power, defense and protection. Use this rune in charms and talismans to protect yourself as well as your property.
• Eihwaz (Yew Tree) - Eihwaz is a rune that can be used as a magical protector and facilitator. It shows us that in the event of an ending situation we find the start of a new situation.
• I then learned about making personal runes:
• "According to Tacitus in his Germania, the Runes should be made from the wood of any nut bearing tree, including oak, hazel, and perhaps pines or cedars."
• Next was researching the meaning of those trees listed: The Victorian Language of Trees on Tales by Trees
• From there, I thought I liked the idea of 'oak' so I researched the meanings behind it further: Oak Tree: Symbolism, Information and Planting Instructions on Urnabios
• It didn't quite work, so I tried again on the Tales by Trees site, and found this line about juniper: "Juniper was meant to serve as a sign of protection."
• Researched juniper via Juniper Tree Symbolism & Meaning on Tree Symbolism
• Of course, I can no longer find my Google source for Juniper wood having a floral, almost rose-like scent to it.

That's not even all of my research. Like I said, I couldn't find my source on juniper lumber having a floral scent, and I know I hit up about a half-dozen other sites. However, they were too long ago, and every time I tried going through my web browser history the thing refreshed around February 7ths, and the research was mostly done closer to the 4th....

Anyway, after doing all of that research, and deciding that Marinette is going to give Luka a binding charm, I had to figure out what the charm would be. It would be easier if it were Adrien, because I could just use the charm bracelet. Duh. Luka, though? Marinette hasn't gifted him anything yet. He gifted her a guitar pick though.... Seemed weird to have it go the other way, however. Also, it wouldn't necessarily help if his voice also cast a magical aura. In the end, it was actually Hubby that came up with the idea of Luka getting a choker. I didn't want to add anything to his canonical design at first, but with the earrings, ring, bracelets, painted nails, and a low-u-neck shirt, truly the only thing he was missing was a necklace. Plus, I think a simple choker would work well with his design.

This is only a quick edit, so it's not the greatest
quality, and you can't really see the charm,
but just to give you a rough idea.

It works, right? What really got me was RIGHT AFTER deciding I was going to give Luka a choker, I found this bit of Aged Up fanart where Luka is ROCKING a choker - well, technically it's a charm on an extremely long chain he could wrap around his neck like a choker, but six of one; half-dozen of the other. Either way, the fanart just solidified that he'd look awesome with one.

Anyway, after deciding on the choker, I spent a bit of time sifting through a LOT of generic Google Image searches before finding this necklace on Amazon.

A close second was this choker by A. Brant + Son.

I think the simple hemp twine and single charm just works better for Luka. What do you think?

Well, along with all of that other research, I knew I needed to keep Tikki in my cast of characters somehow. I did a generic Google search for "red animals" and the second I saw this strawberry poison-dart frog, I knew that was Tikki. I mean, look at that coloring!? It's like the frog is wearing a Ladybug suit!

Image from the Momtastic Web Ecoist article
Well Red: 10 Amazing Red Animals

Look at how tiny they are, though! They're barely larger than a thumb nail! Here's another look at how small they are.

Image courtesy of TripAdvisor

Also, I don't remember why I bothered - probably a means to procrastinate under the justification of helping me visualize it better - but I spent a good hour or so doctoring the image of that snake necklace from Amazon so it looked like a wooden charm. It kept a LOT of color adjustments, and the flattened and singed back side of the pendent didn't come out as good. Still, fairly decent over-all for using a free online photo editor and touch-pad mouse.

Reminder of the original image

Speaking of taking far too much time creating an image... the story's cover art...

You see, as a bit of a change of pace for me, when I was editing Marinette's Song on the 11th, I noticed that I actually had six fairly natural stop-points for the story, all averaging between 1200 and 1800 words apart, making relatively consistent mini-chapters. Taking advantage of those natural stopping points I originally wrote in, I ended up splitting up the nearly-11,000-word story into bite-sized chapters, but still posted the whole story in one go. That way my readers could decide if they wanted to binge the whole thing, or just read it in small chapter bites.

It did keep me a day or two, though, to go back through and try to come up with proper transitional lines for the new chapter breaks. Mostly it was coming up with catchier opening lines - which then lead to new opening paragraphs. It was a task and a half, and one I was not expecting to spend so much time on still, especially when I had this blog and the rest of Fluff Week to finish.

Making the story multi-chapter, however, meant I now needed cover art. As I had mentioned in yesterday's blog post, I do try to have cover art for each of my multi-chapter stories so that they are easily grouped together visually on DeviantArt. Also, that way I don't have to include the story's title for each chapter.

Of course, I didn't think of this until the 13th when I went to publish the story on DeviantArt.

Real quick aside: the reason I publish the stories in the order of DA > FFN > AO3 > Tumblr is as follows. I still haven't figured out how to just upload a word document to DA, so I still cut and paste using the "Enter Text" hotlink. This brings up an HTML writer which doesn't allow emphasis - such as bold face, underline, or italics - to transfer over when I paste. The emphasis has to be added via HTML. Instead of scrolling back through my story and adding the HTML to the places I want italicized - or other emphasis, but usually it's italics - I just add the HTML as I'm writing. It's become second nature now for me to write <i> before hitting italicize, write what I need, then write </i> before switching off of italics.

Anyway, because my base document has the HTML typed into it, it's just easiest to post to DA first. Then I have to go back through my document, find the HTML via the Find feature, delete the HTML because the brackets won't transfer when I upload the document to FFN - leaving behind random 'i's - and re-save the document without the HTML. Once that's done, I upload to FFN. It's a simple upload; one of the easiest for me to do out of all four sites I use. For whatever reason, when I upload to AO3, or copy/paste from my Word document, there's extra line breaks between paragraphs, and it's just tedious to delete those. So instead, I upload to FFN, and then copy/paste to AO3 from FFN's document editor. For whatever reason, that doesn't add the extra line breaks. Go figure.

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So, to recap: I write with the HTML for italics to make life easier for my DA upload. After posting to DA, I delete the HTML and upload to FFN. I then copy the document via the FFN editor, and paste to AO3's uploader. Once all that is done, I go back to my DA posting, You see, when I copy/paste to Tumblr from FFN, AO3, or my Word doc, the italics aren't there, just like with DeviantArt. So, in order to not have to manually scroll through the story in order to put the italics back in, I "edit" the DeviantArt publication in order to access a file with HTML again. Now, the straight HTML doesn't work unless you're specifically in the HTML editor function, in which case I also need to include the HTML for paragraph breaks and the like. Instead, since the brackets still transfer over from DA, I search for the HTML, just like I did when I deleted it from my Word document prior to uploading to FFN. I then add the italics between the HTML coding, delete the coding, slap on a "read more" break somewhere a couple of paragraphs in, and call it a day.

The reason I don't just post to Tumblr at the same time as DA and THEN delete the HTML is because I like linking to the other sites people can read my story on.

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That's why I publish in the order I do. So, naturally, I tried to stick with that routine when I went to publish Marinette's Song on the 13th. Again, I TOTALLY missed that we were supposed to only publish to the AO3 collection until it went live, so I started, as I always do, on DeviantArt. Except, as I went to upload the first chapter I realized I didn't have cover art for the story.

Again, I could have just published as-is, then gone back to add the cover art to link the stories together. That way the story was uploaded on all four sites before 6pm on that Thursday. I guess it's a small blessing that I prioritized the cover, though, because that meant I did NOT publish to FFN before I was "supposed" to, and I didn't publish the story incorrectly on AO3 - something I'll touch on in a moment.

I wanted something quick and easy to make for the cover art. I had limited time, and I'm not terribly skilled with art design anyway. I figured the easiest would be similar to my I Don't Care cover: screen grabs of each half of the couple looking back at the other. The trick then became finding good enough grabs to use.

I started with Luka, hitting up "Captain Hardrock", "Frozer", "Silencer", "Desperada", "Loveater", "Miracle Queen", and then remembering he was also briefly in "Felix." I had a small handful of screen grabs that might have worked, but the one I used for the cover ended up coming from "Felix." I then did the same with Marinette, studying her during each of those same episodes. I also grabbed a nice handful of pics of her, but went with the nice blushing Marinette at the end of "Silencer." She's in a dimly lit room during a concert though, so it was tricky to try to adjust the lighting on her so she was a touch closer to Luka's color levels. Also, trying to cut them out of their respective backgrounds while using only pixlr.com was suuuuch a pain in the butt. I miss having Photoshop....

Then the title itself wasn't saving as centered, even though it showed centered in pixlr. Same with the white letter box I had the title in. I had it extended WAY past the sides of the images, but for whatever reason it kept cutting off with slivers of pink lining the sides on the saved files. I didn't finish editing the images until after the D&D session, so it was already late, and after over 40mins battling pixlr, I shrugged a "good enough for now" and resolved to fix it the next day.

It actually was a fairly quick fix, taking about 30mins or so.

Still, it kept me far too long to make something that wasn't as crucial as I was making it out to be, and that delayed my publishing. Although, as I mentioned, it was probably for the better. I had never published to a collection on AO3 before. I know on FFN and DA you could add an already published story to a collection, so, on the 14th when I finally got around to publishing to AO3, I went to publish the story like I normally did. However, when I went to add the story to the collection, it wouldn't show up in the drop-down options. In fact, I struggled with AO3 - which must have been flooded since it was about 10:30am on Valentine's Day - for about 40mins or so before finally caving and just publishing the first chapter without thinking about the collection. I then tried to add the story to the collection, and couldn't do it. Finally, I deleted the first chapter, and tried AGAIN. This time, I used the "upload" button found in the collection itself. That seemed to have worked fine. However, I would have screwed up again if I had actually published to AO3 on the 13th, because I wouldn't have had a way to hide it, and I forgot all about the collection.

Like I said. Good thing I prioritized the wrong thing, because it saved me from screw up more than I already did.

Anyway, I have to admit that I was a touch nervous when I noticed that the collection was hidden, and therefore my story was as well. I know there have been Tumblr posts warning about that feature of AO3 because you could "lose" your stories if the admin of a collection your story is in changes the privacy of it.

Cpt Reynolds was a mod though, and Knit seemed nice in the interactions I've had with her. So I'm trusting my story in their collection for the event. Worse comes to worst, I have it up on three other sites, and I can easily delete it from the collection and re-upload it under my own account.

So, there it was, about 1pm, crisis mostly averted because the story was hidden inside the collection on AO3, and I hadn't published the chapters on FFN, although I did have them formatted and ready to go once the AO3 collection went live.

We'll ignore that I actually remembered to tag Discovering Miraculous Writers at the end of each chapter, so that blog was starting to reblog my story on Tumblr....

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About 6pm on Valentine's Day, I got an email telling me I received a story as a gift: The event collection on AO3 was live! I was "off-grid" most of the day to spend it with the Hubby, so I didn't see the email until close to 10pm, but I happily published to FFN finally, then went back to my Tumblr posts to update with the links to the AO3, FFN, and DA publications of the story. I then lulled myself to sleep - in the best way - by reading Malcom's story to me!

Again, you can find Or I Could Just Kiss You... over on AO3 or Tumblr.

Summary: Marinette loved Luka. Luka loved Marinette. They were both too blind to see it though, until the day Luka decides to proposition Ladybug...

It is just so sweet. I didn't even remember what prompts I had thrown at the sign-up for this event. I'm terrible at stuff like that, so I literally looked up "Valentine's Day Prompts" and picked the first two that I liked and felt would fit well with Luka and Marinette. Seems one of those random prompts was quite the winner because Mal absolutely loved the prompt line of "Or I could just kiss you..." and just RAN with it.

It is such an amazing, sweet - but sometimes bittersweet - and perfectly paced story. I told Mal that it played out like a 1980s romcom like When Harry Met Sally or something. The concept? Luka and Marinette become best friends, but keep missing each other when they try to confess their feelings. Luka doesn't want to push Marinette, but Marinette keeps thinking she's "too late" and Luka doesn't feel the same way anymore. Luka had figured out that Marinette is Ladybug, and the two, at one point, get into a discussion about first kisses. Luka has yet to have his first kiss, and Marinette comments that she's only kissed a boy as Ladybug, so do they count? She then laments that no one would want to kiss her civilian form, and that's the first time Luka states "Or I could just kiss you.” She laughs it off as a "pity kiss." Fast forward to the duo talking about birthday wish lists, and again Luka asks for a kiss, but in his attempt to sound suave, Marinette misinterpreted as the request being a joke. This starts off a LONG chain of events where it takes these two morons about seven years of going back and forth asking each other for a kiss before they realize BOTH OF THEM ARE SERIOUS and FINALLY get together.

It's so gloriously painful to watch, and you just want to shout at them to just admit they sincerely want that kiss; tell the other how they feel. It's also nice to see how Mal envisions them in their early 20s.

Remember what I said above about not being able to write End Game Lukanette, but will gladly consume it? Yeah. This. This is the perfect example of that. So, yeah. Go read this awesome bit of writing.

And to MalcomReynolds:

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So, I've been giving love to the story gifted me, but what about the other way around?

You tell me, these were the reviews I got from Knit (AKA: ChromeMist):

ChromeMist: Chapter 1 down!

Lol it was fate that I was the one encouraging you to write more of my story! Mal told me my secret admirer was super excited about my prompt! I'm really happy it gave you such inspiration! So far it's really interesting and I can't wait to read the rest! Thanks a bunch!!

ChromeMist: *squeals* That was wonderful! So fluffy and heart warning! And you put so much effort into the actual magick of it! I just glossed over it in mine. Which is funny, we kinda sorta did the same thing...ish!
I don't have enough words though to say how much I love this! Thank you thank you!!

So I guess it's safe to say she enjoyed it? Does my heart good to know that, especially when I tossed Blame Fate for This and The Great Debate seemingly out into the void previously. Of course, I also got more love than simply from Knit/Chrome. The always awesome MalcomReynolds commented on all seven chapters, and another Secret Admirer Exchange participant also left me love and an encouraging review.

Here's the full stats breakdown.

FFN: 271 views, 5 faves, 2 followers, and 1 review
AO3: 206 hits, 20 kudos, 5 bookmarks, and 10 reviews
DA: 72 views and 4 faves

Total Results: 549 views, 29 faves, 7 followers, and 11 reviews

Tumblr Results: 64 notes; 52 likes and 12 reblogs

This post is already long, so you can check out the reviews at their respective sites.

Full disclosure: Discovering Miraculous Writers reblogged 6 times, and, like on DA, the same user could like/reblog each individual chapter on Tumblr, so take that number with a grain of salt. However, it seems most people waited to like and reblog the final chapter, which has links to all of the previous ones. Chapter 7 of Marinette's Song alone had 21 likes and 4 reblogs over on Tumblr. Also, ironically, the final chapter is the only one DMW did NOT reblog. Go figure.

Anyway, that SHOULD be everything I wanted to say about this nearly-month-long project for one of the two fandom events I had signed up for this month.

Now to start up a THIRD post - TRIPLE post week; who knew? - to talk about my Fluff Week stories, and the other stories I've read so far this month.

Catch ya later!

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