Friday, September 19, 2008

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!
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