TWC 1 Chapter notes... chapter 1

If I can catch up on stuff like this, I'll be able to make notes with each chapter I post! So lemme see.

This doesn't correspond with the chapter 1 that's posted on ff.net, because I'm actually separating them a little bit differently for formatting on the website. You'll hopefully manage to figure it out, though, b/c I doubt very much people are going to go run off and open a copy of the fic to play along at home. ^_~

Anyway! I tend to put a buttload of notes at the end of my completed fics; I save 'em up for the finale, so to speak. That's good but what about stuff you wonder on when you're reading? You may not care as much as I do (I love author notes), so if you don't, skip alla this. *G* If I go a chapter at a time I'll have far less overwhelming notes though... that's a plus! Oh yes - this is also how I hope to list my inspirations and if there are any actual lines I've borrowed from a specific source (Cassie Claire made me nervous, even though in my adult life I've never "borrowed" on that level... still though... best to document, yes?)

So, chapter 1 of the Beginning :)

References/etc:
- Kids in the Hall: "Joe"'s reference to Mac & Cheese is loosely inspired by KITH. I no longer remember how, I just know that it was. If you get it, revel in it! Yay for KITH!
- Batman: Darkwing's best "I am the night" expression
- Firesign Theatre: Megavolt's line about "powerful gasoline and a shoeshine" etc is from Firesign's album "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers". *pimp, pimp* Firesign is, for anyone not familiar with them (which is probably a good chunk of my audience), a strange and extremely smart and literate comedy troupe. They will likely show up in more of my fics. ^_~
- Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein: have worked their way into Megavolt's discussion/argument with the large flashlight. I don't know that they had any theories that contradicted one another, though. I really just picked those two names at random.

General notes:
- I started writing the beginning of this rewrite in 2000. I made it a few paragraphs and found the action hard to write. I skipped forward a bit to try and pick up some momentum, got a few more paragraphs done, and completely lost it. It languished for years until I picked it up again recently and found it a tad bit easier. You can see the two different writing styles (my writing style changes, for better or for worse, rather noticeably every couple of years depending on how much writing I actually *do*. Since there were a good six years in between most of the sections, the change is major in spots). I am a lazy editor and just left it unless it really stank.

- Who is Joe? Nobody. I named him because, in my original (1995) version, my pre-reader got confused and thought it was Megavolt in the opening scene. That was due to my lousy writing, and I fixed it in that version, but was left with a need to really make this guy an individual, just to avoid confusion. I don't know much about Joe, except that he's kinda dumb, on the young side, and ultimately rather unlucky. *G*

- I generally treated the Original Version (henceforth referred to as OV) of the fic as an extended outline so far. Take the same basic format and general happenings and just add to it. Flesh out with better characterizations, a few more gags, and a slightly slower pace. It's funny to look at the OV next to this chapter especially because it really does read like a summary or something of the new version.

- Since this is a rewrite I think I have a problem with one of the major things this story is supposed to be about: introducing Beth as a new character. I have been writing her for so long, and so many people have already read other fics (if not this one) with her, that it's almost taken for granted for me that people know who she is. Her first scene (which is another one I started in 2000 and made it about three paragraphs into) is intended to introduce her in a slightly more personal, less rushed way than in the OV. I'm too close to the material to have any idea if it introduces her for the first time or if it just brings her into the story as if we're supposed to know her already. I think it's the latter. I've come back to try to rewrite it again and worried that I'm overdoing it instead, so I've opted to leave it the sort of subtle way it is now, and just go ahead and look lazy. I did realize that I didn't give her last name at all in the version on FF.net, so that's fixed. I need to work a good description of her in there somewhere too. Oy.

- Oh yes! And now we get treated to Beth's crazy relationship with her mother right off the bat, which probably confuses the reader about her personality if they don't already know Beth! Heh ^_^;; Also I hate writing accents. Especially Irish accents.

- I'm not going to pretend I'm utterly comfortable writing for Megavolt. But I enjoyed it in the OV - I still think he's one of the highlights - and although I'm probably sort of overthinking it now, I'm enjoying it here. I have come up with a few lines I've really liked, and the "giant Employee of the Month plaque" is one of them. :D

- Beth's morning experience with the shipment at Bindler's is based heavily on my own years of experience receiving shipment in various retail positions. Yeah it was all exciting at the first job when I was 19. It got less and less so afterwards. (Though there's still something to be said for opening boxes and finding out what's inside... It's like Christmas twice a week! Um but I digress) I never tried desperately to make conversation with the deliverymen, though, and they were all quite friendly for the most part. :) This scene is a plus though because it finally introduces us a bit more to the "real" Beth, the babble-fest who wants to like everyone (and wants even more to *be* liked).

- For anyone who has only read the FF.Net version of this, I suggest checking it on my website. I added a brief description of Beth (in terms of why she avoids mirrors) and I find it rather amusing, especially the part about the size of her head. XD

- The Feynmann/Einstein stuff came about because last year I read Richard Feynmann's memoirs (well, one of them) and really enjoyed it. When I was trying to think of a version of a deep and philosophical discussion that Megavolt might have, I thought something perhaps with Einstein and then picked Feynmann to counter him, even though I haven't seen any evidence that they were ever at odds. But they worked together so maybe they contradicted each other at some point...? Eh, it was just an excuse to toss Richard Feynmann into my fic. ;D Note how I am so lazy I cannot bother to make "duck" versions of either name.

- I found it very easy to write a cranky Drake. (Hmm wonder why. maybe because I always write him that way. 9_9) Contrarily I found it very hard to write LP in this scene. I had about three or four discarded tries of a POV from him before DW gets up, over-explaining his friendship with Beth; finally I decided to just let it go for a while longer, not in the interest of making it a surprise but just to try not to overexplain it. Which I proceed to do later, but some of it NEEDS explaining... kind of... damn I'm just wordy. :P One thing I did decide to do as I was developing the chapter was play down the relationship between LP and Beth. Originally it was going to be a little stronger, still without him quite realizing he had a crush on her, but definitely with him having a crush. I ultimately came to decide on a different track for that part of this story; it's really funny the way these things get away from you, huh? :)

- You and I both know that I have nothing in this story that is more Darkwing-esque than "Sidekick Ruins Photo Opportunity". ^_^

So you know how I said the notes would be less overwhelming if I did them on a chapter-by-chapter basis? That only works if I don't add a bunch of notes as I go because I have the extra space to do so. CRIPES. :P

Let me just toss one out here then

So yeah, I was going to update this on Monday. And before that I was going to update it last Thursday. Seriously! But then I did not, and in the end here we are and I'm like "must do NOW!"

I have at least three things I want to post on, but I'm only going to do one tonight. Since the timing for it is more or less apt (or it was when I first wanted to make the post), I'm going to do a characterization post on Gosalyn, since she made her first appearance in TWC1 with the chapter that I posted on 6/12.

So. Writing Gosalyn. I actually find it very difficult. :) Well, difficult under certain circumstances: specifically I have a lot of trouble writing Gos in group settings, because in those situations she is not one for insight or planning so much as a general sense of excitement over any adventure going on. And if there is no adventure what then? That's where I run into problems, so Gosalyn tends to tune people out a lot in my "group scenes". *G* On the other hand I love writing her in dialogue with Drake; that comes very naturally for some reason, they play off each other well in my head, I guess.

Gosalyn obviously has a lot of energy, and although she has a definite penchant for getting into trouble, she doesn't do it maliciously. With Gos it's like, hmm, let's compare her to Negaduck and say that both of them might like to see something blow up. But where Negaduck would want to blow it up so that it's destroyed, Gosalyn would just want to see it blow up for the pyrotechnics and stuff. It's not the destruction or anything bad, it's just the excitement of the moment that she loves. This is not entirely hard to write, because it lends itself to a sort of cheerful, exuberant delivery of odd suggestions that go in a general direction that many people would just not expect.

The main problem is that I don't like to write characters as just one-liners (or several-liners), I like to try to go into more depth and get inside their heads. The previous chapter was really hard for me in that way, because I found it very difficult to figure out what Gosalyn would think of Beth. Beth is not exciting or interesting, although (unlike with Drake) as long as she's not actively working against Gos I don't see Gos actually disliking her. Thinking she's boring, sure, but Gos might rebel a bit against authority but she only actually antagonizes someone if that person antagonizes her first. (Besides which, Beth has no air of authority whatsoever.) Having said that though, why should she let Beth into the house? I went with a general sense of curiosity and a short attention span.

So yeah. It's not that I feel like I don't understand Gosalyn... Generally I think I have a decent grasp of her character. The problem is mainly in that I find it tricky to write a ten-year-old, and in trying to convincingly relate her into the series as a whole person and not a cartoon character (been tricky for me for all the characters so far, eh? This is like my most-repeated line!). I think I will do better in later chapters; I'm generally mostly satisfied, I guess, with this chapter but I felt like I sort of shoe-horned certain aspects into where I wanted them to fit and then I had to awkwardly shift the POV over to Beth in a kind of weird way. So - later chapters and fics might work a little bit better.

Whoop-de-doo, Tarantula Town!

After ... I no longer remember how many weeks it's been now, I *finally* have managed to finish the last chapter of Act II of TWC1. Thank you lord. I had wanted to have it done by my trip two weeks ago but I just... well, I've been through it. ^_~ Once I got past a certain point it became a little easier and I'm just so glad to have finally posted it! I had to write it slightly out of order, regarding transitional scenes and such, so after I finished the last bit I had to go back and edit and rewrite. I ended up with my first official "deleted scene"! XD Something for the webpage, if I ever get it up and running.

When I was writing it I didn't like how some parts were turning out, but once I'd sewn it all together I reread those parts and they read the way I wanted them to after all. Go figure. Oh well: it's done! It's DONE! So now I will try to write a real content-laden post very soon! But first I had to shout with glee. ^_^

June: Tidbits?

Heh, so here's some of the usual:

1) Waaah writer's block sucks. :P (I actually have been writing the past couple of days, but slowly and with a great sense of awkwardness; I really want to be done with this chapter so I can post it)

2) Good golly it's been how long since I've posted here?! (Maybe I should make an effort to post once a week, or... something)

3) Blah blah, lots of rambling with lots of parenthetical comments!

Moving on to less generic, more specific comments:

a) Thank you Dharma for your comments on my last post! I love reading your take on the characters, always. I'm especially fond of your take on LP, actually; it's like it gives me permission to write him the way I like to write him. ^_~ Any more musing you care to do on any aspect of the series, I for one would be very interested in reading it!

b) I am terribly terribly grateful to Eric, Amanda, and Icequeenkitty for their gifts to me of fanfiction. I will be posting more about this in my LJ, but I think the most detailed postings will be here b/c I would like to talk about Beth's role in them and how different they all are and how awesome they all are too. I also want to say, to anyone who intended to write for me and didn't manage it: don't sweat it, because it's very very likely that I would be *exactly* the same as you in that situation. If you *wanted* to do it that's more than sweet enough! I am soooo low on fic inspiration that even when I promise it I rarely deliver. Sigh. So yeah, the ones who wrote are not necessarily any more awesome than the ones who did not, but they do have the extra aspect of me having something to explicitly gush over. ^_~ (This will be easier once AMANDA UPLOADS HER FIC *poke poke* I am on the verge of typing it in myself just so people can read it... Which is probably not at all true, really, I doubt I'd spontaneously do that without her permission... but whoooo knooooows what desperate acts I may resort to...)

c) I was so, so right about that scene that's been giving me trouble, the one where Beth shows up at the Mallard house for the first time. It's NOT that hard at all but it's going so awkwardly for me, just because I've attached all this importance to it in my head. Argh. It feels like it's really overwritten - and so, for that matter, does a lot of the Launchpad stuff. I really need to simplify but I feel like I have a lot to *do* so that makes it tougher.

And a few things I think I might write about later:

i) A handful of soundtrack picks for various fics ("All About Elizabeth" has the most, "High Dry and Flooded" has a few, and otherwise I may have a short list of just your basic "character" music)

ii) I feel like I should make posts with "notes" on each chapter of the fics I've been posting. Not huge ones like these, but little ones with a list of the references that pop up, any trivia about a scene, etc.

iii) I like cheese. (In other words I don't have much else to say.)

Man! I really hope I can finish this stupid chapter by this weekend and get it posted! Part of why I'm getting antsy with it is because I decided a while ago I was going to finish Act II before I posted more on AAE, and it's been so long since I've written much on that story that I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to get back into THAT, either! Ay-yi-yi. I spent soooo long with writer's block, then I had about a year without it and it was fabulous, and now it's BACK. And within a year or so I'm likely to lose the little tiny bit of time I have to write, and I have SOOOO much left to do... whine whine... ;) It's fanfiction. Lighten up, Rebecca. :D

Well, hope everyone is happy! (And still interested in reading this stuff!)