Sloggin' through the chapter notes...

Here's chapter two of act II, still on TWC1. I'm at least catching up to as much of it as I have written, now... :)

References etc:

-"The Simpsons" - "Boy, would my face have been red!" That's one of Homer's lines, see, so there's a Dan Castellaneta reference too! *G* I believe it's from "Homer's Enemy".
-Ummm... this chapter is essentially a continuation of the previous one, so... there's not really much else. :P

Oh, I really do love that grappling hook gag ^_^

Heh. I kind of like the way I play the Beth/LP stuff here. It's like one big sleight of hand trick, where first LP is focused on Beth... why? Because he wuvs her? Oh, uh, no, it's because she keeps asking about DW and LP isn't sure how to divert her attention. Then there's the entire rationalization about how he's NOT interested in her. I think I have sort of discovered a small handful of new readership with this rewrite, and they may actually NOT realize that the tide turns to LP/Beth. It's just been so taken for granted for so long that I'm enjoying it a little this way, not in a "mwahaha, I'm messing with heads!" way, but I quite like the idea that I can maybe have new fans who will enjoy the new, more gradual set-up I have planned, without knowing what's coming. :) Boy, that note got away from me! This was supposed to just say, simply, I just realized I'm kinda faking people out but perhaps with too much protestation. *G*

Not really sure how, precisely, this whole "social work" idea as an excuse for Drake's "actual" work came about. Nor am I sure how convincing it is, but it doesn't have to last much longer. ;)

I came up with the taxi stuff one day while walking from my car to my office (I park about a block away). I liked it, and rereading what I wrote now, I still like it. How much of it is because LP is a gentleman, and how much of it is because it's Beth, I'm not sure. We'll just have the lines blurred, I suppose.

Another similarity between myself and Beth: I cannot bear to let people give me money for something spontaneously. It makes me VERY uncomfortable.

"That's enough outta you, you big bully!" is *almost* a reference, since I'm kind of going back to Dead Duck in terms of Launchpad's inability to improvise dramatic dialogue on an appropriate scale. ("You'll never work in this town again!") The "big bully" part is probably proof he should've stopped. ;)

I always liked Megs stepping over the side of the roof in the original. I like how I rewrote it even more, though. "An interesting, yet brief, sound". Heh. The best part is, Dan Castellaneta has such a great repertoire of interesting sounds, I can dream he'd do that description justice. ^_^

The "recovery" of Darkwing is one of those moments that just fits better into a cartoon - I tried to shy away from "physical gags" and such in fanfic, since they don't translate well, but it's the kind of show Darkwing is so I can't quite avoid 'em completely. On the other hand, this is mild enough that it can be described reasonably well. It's just so hard to get cartoony visual gags into words - I'm sure most authors know just what I'm talking about, and most avoid them for the very same reason.

I don't think Darkwing's "Not awake?" line works. Sigh. I had trouble thinking of something and that doesn't quite fit as well as I'd hoped.

How obvious is it that Beth calls Drake by his full name, all the time, even in her head? It's like Jordan Catalano!

Poke at myself, for sticking Megs on a bunch of rooftops this time around for some reason. I think he spends like half the fic on a rooftop somewhere or other, and there are about three or four of them. I realized this was excessive, but had no better ideas (and I DID think - figuring out the timing and placement of, for instance, Beth's trip home and Megavolt's decision to try to follow her, took a while) so I just made fun of myself a bit. *G*

There's another joke that I felt was kinda nicely subtle as Megs counts the bolts again: his certainty that the bolts have multiplied, as if the number is in flux, and he might now have not only one extra but several.

The end!

Read Along With Zebbie!

I need to create a new tag, now that I have that nifty title. Yeesh, just... I am lame. :P Anyway though.

Act II begins with my second big Megavolt scene. This is actually sorta proof of how clueless I am when writing Megavolt. I get very, very lost because I don't have an internal Megs "voice" - I think I actually had more of one in high school, believe it or not - so I tend to just write in silliness and do a slightly stream-of-consciousness kind of bit. Stream-of-consciousness usually works for Megs. I also do enjoy throwing in really ridiculous phrases, like "extremely beautiful lady pigeons".

So that's our starting point. References for this chapter:
- "Not once; not twice; but thrice" - the Simpsons, an early episode with the Nuclear Plant softball ringers. Ahhh, Burns.

- "All he could do was stare at them, the bolts, his albatross" - Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in a really stupid I've-Never-Actually-Read-It kind of way. The reference is that the bolts are the albatross around his neck... and... verrrrry few people probably needed that explained. SIGH.

- Brief and totally not-clever reference to "Clash Reunion" since Beth thinks Megs's name is "Megawatt". SHE is not the one referencing the ep. I am because I stuck it in there for fans so they would think I was clever.

Nothin' much else. Unless you count referencing my earlier draft of this fic as a reference; I brought back the pigeon bit. Kind of. :) I don't know where the pigeon bit came from in the OV; I just thought it was funny. I made so much out of it, though, that when I was rewriting I felt it had to show up again. It's like an homage. ;P I actually didn't know quite how to fit it in there, either.

By the way, as of the writing of that scene I still am not at all sure what Megavolt is DOING. (I know now. Honest, I do.) Shhhh! Don't tell anyone! It's such sloppy writing!

"Poor pigeon" - as you can see, I couldn't bring myself to actually kill the dumb bird. Though, I leave it up to the reader to guess if the pigeon DW and LP see fly away is actually the same one Megs refers to in his POV scene. If so, it's not a pigeon that learns very quickly.

The "stealth" stuff is not a reference to anything. But I thought it was very, very funny... inside my head. Not sure it works quite as well if you're not me. But that's your loss. ^_^ Oh, and I couldn't resist an opportunity to take a potshot at one of my least favourite words of all time: "healthful". GUESS WHAT, THE WORD YOU WANT TO USE IS "HEALTHY" SO :P :P :P (Yes. I am in 8th grade.)

Please, please, please don't let me be the only person who thinks it's funny that Megavolt would mistake a grappling hook for a robotic spider, and take a liking to it. PLEASE.

And here we get to Beth's narrative, explaining - at least in part - why she fell for him. I kind of did that in my notes last time, but here's a version within the fic that I like a li'l bit better. Yay, good for me! Of course it's me being in love with words again. ;D Anyway, this topic will show up again in later fics, naturally, because Beth ruminates. But this gives us the gist. Also, right now she's really only sort of taken with him and intrigued by him; the real crush part will come a tiny bit later (though really, by the end of the fic, she's pretty gone).

The Launchpad and Beth sequence - the one that is within this chapter - was hard for me to write. Often when I write them they kind of ramble and have trouble getting to the point (probably because Beth has that trouble, and unlike my lack of a Megavolt voice, the Beth voice in my head is very very strong and likes to take over conversations), and this was no exception. I had a direction I wanted the conversation to go in, and moreover I had a direction I wanted the POV to go in; getting it there was hard. There seem to be a lot of things Beth doesn't want to directly address. :P

That's all for now! Lala! I thought I might get to chapter 2 tonight, but it's late and me want sleep. More later though - honest this time!

Boo on me!

Yeah I keep saying I'm going to post more often, don't I? Okay, here's the deal this time around. I have, for the past three or so weeks, just not been writing. It's not even writer's block, it's just like a general indifference. Oh, I intend to write while I'm not at home. Then I get home and it's like "Naaaahhhh, not tonight."

Well, tonight I forced myself to finish a chapter of "All About Elizabeth" that had been sitting in near-completion for about three weeks (seriously, since the middle of August) and get that done, and since I don't feel like starting the second-to-last chapter of "Double-Plait Bolt" right yet I'm going to do the note-thing instead. The reason I put that off is because I am usually coding it for my website at the same time (let me at some point go into the sheer futility of this exercise, but not now) and I'm lazy about that. :P

Anyway though! Stay tuned directly for some (surprisingly short this time, I think) notes on Act II of "Double-Plait Bolt"'s rewrite!