Real quick then

I finished "Sea of Green". :D

Blurg, links...

at Fanfiction.net

at Archive Of Our Own

Please send cookies! ^_^

I have some of TWC3, "Forever Young", finished. I'll work on it a tiny bit while I'm on vacation and see how soon I can post it when I get back. 'Til then, hope you like! :)

And it's you I need to show

So, for lack of a better topic to post about tonight, I thought I would copy DeathByMarshmallows and do a music/soundtrack post.

First though I'll pimp out DBM's blog, right here, 'cause I follow it and she updates fairly often and she's cool, yo. ;D

Moving on - so what I do is, I keep a "Soundtrack" playlist in iTunes and I don't have it organized thematically or anything. Matter of fact it doesn't even contain all my soundtrack songs, but it's got a fair share... all the ones I actually own, anyway. Then there are the ones that have just popped up over the years when I've heard them on the radio, or whatever. Naturally, I don't have iTunes on the computer I'm currently on, so I don't have that playlist. But here's a selection that doesn't cover everything but gives an idea!

Fic-specific - these are nearly all later fics; unfortunately I don't have song inspiration for the earlier ones. :P
- TWC4:
"Strange Magic" by ELO, which is not a Morgana/Drake song as you might think but instead is a scene inspiration for part of this fic, hopefully to be rewritten in 2011. The scene in question doesn't exist in the original version.

- High, Dry, and Flooded:
"That Kind of Love" by Alison Krauss - this is one of my (many) songs for Beth that is perhaps not as tragic/sad/one-sided as I make it sound, but the song still carries that tone for me, so this one plugs in nicely to the scene I want it to go with.
"Love Stinks" by the J. Geils Band is a sort of thematic relation to much of the series, but it's directly referenced in this one so it goes here.

- All About Elizabeth:
This one has more than nearly any other, so naturally I have trouble remembering them all. A lot are from the 80s, since a lot of the fic takes place in flashbacks.
The main one that comes to mind is "Hey Mickey", for a crush that Beth has on a football player. ;D
A non-80s one that I associate with this fic also is "Last Dance with Mary Jane" by Tom Petty, just for this line: "Tired of screwin' up/Tired of goin' down/Tired of myself/Tired of this town". Yes, I am not kind to Beth in most of my song choices. ^_^;;
Towards the end, "I Believe" by Chris Isaak is a great, great song. Peppy, upbeat, and totally cynical about love. This is Beth putting her life back together.

- The House on Avian Way:
The entire soundtrack of "Beetlejuice" is the soundtrack of this fic. I can't go into it more than that. Well, I could - I actually have tracks that match up to specific scenes - but there's no point if you don't have the soundtrack sitting in front of you. *G*

- Untitled Christmas fic:
I have a ton of Christmas songs on my playlist for a fic I'm intending to write (started it in 2007. Maybe this year.:P) This includes "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm" by Dean Martin, "Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas" by The Eels, and more than anything, "Last Christmas" by Wham. That song, to me, is just a Beth song anyway. But I need to stop giving this girl sad heartbroken songs!

I have a Beth/LP playlist of sorts, and a few Beth songs in general, but I think I'll save them for another post. I know there are very few songs here but I kind of talked so much about them, I took up enough space! *G* Now I'm just going to listen to "I Believe" because I forgot how awesome that guitar is. Chris Isaak is so badass rockabilly. I love him so much. :D

I believe in lovers walking side by side
I believe that someday I'll be satisfied
I believe the angels listen and God hears us pray
And I believe in a beautiful day
Yeah, I believe it's gonna work out okay
But not for me...
And not for you.

I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe...

WOOT!

Wow. So I'm a few more sentences away from being finished with TWC2. *sigh*

I'm going to edit it over the next couple of days and going to try to have the very earliest beginnings of TWC3 ready to post before I put up the final chapter, so that anyone who is curious about the next fic won't read the start of the old version and go "Huh? Why does this not match up at all?"

Looks like it won't make *quite* 6,000 words, but it's over 5,000 and as I said I have a few more sentences to go.

Well, no spoilers in this entry!

Meanwhile, I'm in the process of starting to put my fics up at An Archive of Our Own, because the ads at fanfic.net are killing me. Seriously, I keep having to force a shut down of my browser because these ads trying to get me to download a virus/spyware are all over.

Ew, speaking of which, i'd better run my spyware cleaner just to be safe. :( If I find anything I'm going to need to go change all my passwords. :P

Now here's what's really frustrating. I had an idea of something to post about here this evening, and now I don't knwo what it was, at all. RRGH. I hate that. I will say that I replied to the comment that was left in my last post, so that's there as a second comment...

Oh yeah, well, one other thing I was wondering about, though I don't think I'm going to get my answer here since this isn't really a discussionable forum. But I'll put it here for now anyway. *G* I am hoping, with TWC2 out of the way, to keep my momentum going and spend the next 6 or so months working on two fics at the same time (as i've mentioned before), one a rewrite of TWC3 and the other a new fic in teh continuity. But I'm starting to wonder if it would be worth my time to work on new stuff right now, or if I should focus on just getting the rewrites done first. I know my motto is to work on whatever I'm inspired on, but right now I feel like I could push myself to do either one (or try for both); the last time I tried to do a rewrite and a current fic at the same time I got writer's block for, quite literally, a year. To be fair I think the fact that I was pregnant for most of that time period had something to do with it, but still. I worry. ;)

If I'm going to only focus on one, I should focus on the rewrite, right? That'll benefit more people. I just wonder how much of an audience I have for new fics right now, which is too bad, b/c things are about to start happening in those new fics. Oh well... someone will get there eventually. ;)

I is getting a commission done

I was going to write "I can has commission" and then I thought, man, that is so played. So 2008. Right?

Anyway! I'm splurging for myself because I'm having a crappy time of things and are from my stories makes me happy. So I'm commissioning a couple of scenes illustrated from my fics, by Canti550, and it's gonna be awesome.

The only problem is that I don't actually know what scenes I want done. *headdesk*

I have mostly figured out what fic I want them from, at least one of them anyway; but... I thought I had picked one out yesterday, then I went to find the chapter it was in and decided it wasn't the right one. So I decided on a different one from the same fic and all was well until today when I read over it and thought Oh, no. Too heavy. ARGH. So I'm going back to the first one and thinking maybe that is the better idea, only I'm not sure how it would be distilled.

Well I guess I can leave that up to the artist; I don't have to plan this stuff out for her, do I? ;)

For the record, the fic is "High, Dry, and Flooded" if you're among those who have read it. I guess I'll go with my original pick for the first one and then figure out my second. Does anyone have any suggestions for something they'd like to see Canti550 illustrate? I'm a little overwhelmed seeing as how I have about 15 fics in this stupid series. :P I know it's totally up to me, but I'll be happy to consider suggestions! Also since I'm looking for a Beth/LP scene for my first one, the second one doesn't need to be themed that way, so anything would be good...

This is all far from over

So in about a week I am going on vacation! Woohoo for me!

Meanwhile I thought i would try to make at least one little update here in the meantime, just to keep my readership (hey both of you) entertained. ;)

Today I think I'll just do what I did in my last entry, and go through what things I've changed in this rewritten version of TWC2, now that I'm nearly finished (and hoping to post the final chapter within the next week! :D)

The original version of this fic was, I will be honest, a Mary Sue Festathon. Arama. I suppose it had some things going for it - it was pretty nice to Bushroot, and such - but bah. I don't know. The thing behind it was that I loved Bushroot (and I still do) and I just wanted to give him a chance to not be a total villain, and maybe get a little love in return. So that was the intent....

The result was a bit of an off-characterization for everyone, which in turn was a bit of a theme for the early batch of fics in the series. In this case, Bushroot was just too much of a good guy. He basically does all the same things in the current fic as he did in the original, so action-wise and motivation-wise I guess I was OK, but I think some of the overdoing it came via Beth's response to him.

See, Beth was a little scared at *first* in that version, but she quickly overcame it once she saw into Bushroot's soul in a way no one ever had before and understood that he was a good, good man. :P

Okay, that's a little... harsh, I guess. But it does end up being like that. They see each other as sort of kindred spirits, and although the same twist comes at the end, Beth doesn't let it totally ruin her appreciation of Reggie... who, meanwhile, has a raging crush on her, and she's not entirely sure HOW she feels about him.

So it didn't take too long for me to really wish that I hadn't set up this semi-romance between them, when I've already got Launchpad crushing on her for no reason, and so on... it was just too neat and perfect. I honestly *meant* it to be a one-fic thing and just be b/c Bushroot responded to positive attention and would latch on to ANYONE who was nice to him. But, it went too far, IMO.

There were other Mary Sue elements - I'll go into them in my more specific changes. But the Beth/Reggie relationship was the one that bugged me the most. I ended up altering it slightly so that there's still a sort of subtext to their interactions, but it's one-sided, and it's totally unacted on. I hope that it does come across more as I meant it in the first place, motivated by his loneliness and just being glad that someone, anyone, is talking to him. And there's also a good likelihood that it's because she keeps reminding him of Rhoda, which is a wholly superficial thing based more on wishful thinking (I even have him looking closely at her and thinking how they don't look very much alike; Rhoda is a hottie and Beth is just not. Cute and pretty but not the "hot numero" that Rhoda was. ^_~).

As for specifics, I just kept the same basic outline but changed a lot of things so that they made more sense to me:

- Beth would need permission to actually show up to babysit that evening, so I added a scene where she talks to Launchpad.

- Beth and Gosalyn's interactions needed some major TLC. Actually it took me a long while to figure out how they'd react to one another. I sort of felt like Gos wouldn't have that much of an opinion on Beth, wouldn't actually dislike her - she's a good kid and I think Beth is too mild to actually get her to rebel, so she'd feel kind of guilty disliking her. She doesn't feel guilty disobeying her, though, because Beth makes it so easy. More than anything I needed to find a reason why Gos would want Beth to stay around when I had set it up that Drake VEHEMENTLY did not want her there. I'm sort of still struggling as to why Drake would let her, but having Gos be thrilled that a grownup was basically doing her homework for her (even with Beth's halfhearted attempt at rules) was my best shot for this fic.

- Since I had added a subthread where Drake did not trust Beth, I had to stick in things where he was constantly checking on her.

- The method of Beth's escape was one of the biggies. She just *happened* to be good with plants (still a bit of a Sue-ish touch for this fic, but I have turned it into a firmly-established character trait at this point so I'm not nervous about it anymore), and in the original, she somehow managed to just... charm the plants. I guess that made sense to me when I wrote it, but why the heck would that work? Who can talk to plants unless they have a telepathic link with 'em? That didn't occur to me until some time later. So instead Beth makes a daring escape off the roof, yays. Not... perfect, but a lot more active and less fortuitous and convenient.

- A big change is that she's utterly terrified of Bushroot and they don't hit it off right away... and, as much as she does start to relax around him, she's never perfectly at ease. Just as she starts to get used to him, he goes and gets all supervillainy on her, which is pretty much a guarantee that - sadly - they'll never really be *friends*. But I felt it was important to note that Bushroot really is a villain, even if he's not evil or a bad guy. He's totally self-motivated and not 100% rational. I went into this in my other entry on the subject so I won't cover it here, but I thought it was naive and missing a big part of his character - and of Beth's - if I had Beth just be his BFF.

- The original also had Bushroot decide not to change Beth, whereas here I changed it to leave it up in the air. I think he would've been talked out of it if DW hadn't shown up exactly when he did, but I wanted to let it go either way. Who knows? Oh yes, and part of why he decided to let her go was because the *plants* didn't want him to hurt her. WTF. 9_9

- Since I haven't posted the finale yet, I can't go into a whole lot more detail, but I can say without spoilers that Beth initially got really mouthy with Darkwing. This was when I was going to have her change a bit more by the end of the first five-story arc - just get more outgoing and outspoken, so the idea was that she was more firey under the surface. I've since discovered that this is not who Beth is, and besides, the whole "ironically she loves him as Drake but not as DW!" is kind of a tired idea.

So the end result ... well, this fic is what it is. I still don't love it, to be honest. I just don't feel like it's my most inspired idea, although there are parts of it I really like. But I feel like some of it is reaching, and some of it doesn't go far enough; in all, I'll be very glad when it's done, because I'm mostly satisfied with this rewrite and I hope it'll stand up better than the original did. But I want to move on to other stuff now. :)

I'm about to get very cross

Self? this is not the way to get the final chapter of TWC2 finished, self.

Browsing deviantART and Youtube is NOT going to get any writing done. Self? SELF! Stop going on Facebook! What is WRONG with you!?

Now. Sit down and write.

What do you mean, blogging about distractions on the Internet is the same thing as those distractions? No no, this is different, because *I'm* the one doing it.

Wait a minute...

...Well damn.

PS this final chapter is probably going to top out 6,000 words or over, but that's okay, you know why? Because it's the only chapter in this fic to do that, whereas about half of the ones in TWC1 were that length. :P

Keeping it Real!

Thought this might be fun: in this blog entry I'm going to spell out the biggest differences between my Original Version of TWC1, "My Kingdom for a Double-Plait Bolt", and the rewrite.

The biggest difference is that the new fic is about three times as long. BUUUUUUT to get more specific:

- Okay, number one difference is the interpersonal dynamics. In the first version of the fic, Launchpad and Darkwing walked into Bindler's Hardware, Beth laid eyes on Drake and fell in love with him, and Launchpad laid eyes on Beth and fell for her. Why? I... I don't know. I wanted him to, I guess. I made a stab at explaining why Beth would fall for a guy who treated her like garbage from the start a little later, but it was never really satisfactory; I never really did fully explain what would've drawn Launchpad to Beth, whom he'd never met and who was not especially beautiful or all that interesting. She was just nice, and cute. So I wanted to give a little more depth to their relationship, therefore I set up the fact that they were kinda-sorta friends, or friendly anyway, and that LP likes flirting with her.

- Everything, and I mean everything, was just rushed. The whole thing was like an outline; stuff just happened, and then more stuff happened, and it was like I had five things I wanted to occur in this fic so that was what i wrote. I didn't make a lot of effort in the getting there. So Beth is just sort of plunked into the story; Megavolt just shows up at random; Drake just takes an instant dislike to Beth, etc etc.

- Megavolt had no real plot. I mean he was building something, that was it. I didn't ever really figure out what that thing was or what it would do, although I tried to pretend like I did. I believe (and this goes with the previous point) that at that stage I was able to write a fic in about 2-4 weeks so I guess that goes along with it.

I suppose that pretty much covers it for this one (I'm not thinking that clearly on it at the moment); for the most part I didn't change huge plot points in this, I just expanded on it and rewrote the character interactions, but it largely keeps the same structure, with a number of extra scenes. Stay tuned, though, as I will ultimately post about the differences between TWC2 OV and rewrite; that's a fun one. :)

Oh, and click the TWC1 tag if you are interested in reading any of the chapter notes for that story. The majority are spoiler-free. I haven't done any yet for TWC2 - I'm going to start them when the fic is done just in case I end up editing some of it. Doubtful but you never know...

Later!

I love it when this happens

So I went out on a walk today during my afternoon break and I love nature. Even when it's freaking freezing outside if I have the time to clear my head I can make progress on my fics that surprises me.

I'm working on structuring the rewrite of TWC3, and there are a number of things that happen in the course of this fic which... well, I need a new way to get there. (I'll go into these after I start posting the fic, I guess.) I hadn't been stressing over them, precisely, but I was getting to a point where I was wondering just how i'd be dealing with them and if I would manage to pull them off a bit better than I did when I was a kid. Anyway I don't knwo if it's the fresh air or what, but I had a big breakthrough a few months ago and started rewriting chapter one (back at hte start of September), and the breakthrough came when I was walking to my office from a faroff bus stop; then today in the gawdawful cold I had *two*!

One of them I wasn't even precisely looking for! That was the fun part. It was one of those things that came out of my making up a discussion in my head between DW and Launchpad, something semi-plot related; most of the time when I do this, a lot of it doesn't make into the fic because by the time I sit down to write I end up just restarting the conversation. But even so, every so often just letting the dialogue flow in my head gives me an idea on how to do something. In this case, I wasn't sure how to fit an initial confrontation between DW and Quackerjack into the end of the act until I had Darkwing musing about doing a sting operation and using someone as bait. It was initially a throwaway line until I realized, oh WAIT, that would actually work perfectly!

And oops, I spoiled who the bad guy is in this one. Oh well, anyone can find out by reading the first scene of the fic once I post it so it's not going to be a secret. ;)

*sigh* I feel happy now, because that means I basically have the first act all smoothed out. :) This one might take me a little longer, I think, than TWC2 has been; it's funny, things are coming a little more slowly but when they do I feel like they're really *good* ideas. (We'll see about the execution but they feel right in my head.) Whereas with TWC2, the story since i started writing it has come quickly but it's felt a little bit canned and uninspired to me all along. It's not a bad story, I just don't feel like it's sparkling.

Oh my god I have ad agency descriptions going. Shoot me. :P

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah! Spooky, scary!

Just for the record, nearly all of my subject lines are completely unrelated to the posts. In case there was any confusion. ;) They're also usually from movies, TV, or occasionally music.

Meanwhile! In reading the DWD comic, and in seeing a few people whose fic synopses or other fan works incorporate the new comic canon into their verse, it occurred to me that I have absolutely no way to incorporate that into my AU. I'm not even going to try. That's largely because it's an ongoing thing and it has some amount of continuity, and I don't really want to totally adapt (again!) my reality to fit into the new stuff and then have it be invalidated anyway... heck, I think there's a good chance my series *will* be invalidated which is part of why I only consider the comic canon to be semi-official.

Because I am a canon freak and I will always try my best to fit things into existing canon until I reach a point where that totally cannot happen and then I spinoff entirely. Heh. ^_^;;

SO, back on track! I can't fit my AU into the comic verse and in a way I feel like I'm missing out on that. So I just spent a little time wondering what Beth might be like in the canon of the comics, at least during the first Quackwerks arc. I don't have a whole lot of info but I bet she'd be working there quite happily, doing more than she gets paid to do but pleased that she doesn't have to interact with many people. At first I thought she'd be in accounting but then I thought "they probably have a hardware division, right?" But then on third thought I was thinking she'd be in the labs division. I think it would be cute to finally see her in a lab coat, using her degree at least a little bit.

I have no idea what would "happen" beyond this. I have an inkling that she somehow ran into Drake while they were both working there and got a crush on him, and manages to find him every so often during coffee breaks; once Darkwing Duck comes back and Drake leaves, I'm not sure if Beth would stay or if she'd move on (she'd probably stay unless something *made* her go), but she might run into Drake and Co. on the street or something. At which point, if Morgana was there, she'd be a teensy bit crushed.

...I got nothing beyond that. :P

I have been playing with the idea of doing a few little comics with this idea though. :D God knows if I could pull them off; I don't draw expressions all that well on Drake's face. I guess that means I need to practice more.