On-Schedule

So! I actually managed to update TWC3 a second time this month! If I can get the last two chapters done on-schedule then we'll be done around the end of August/beginning of September :)

It's not up yet on AO3, but here's the FF.net link.

Since this is winding down, and I haven't done any chapter notes or much talking about the fic itself, I thought I'd make a post about... well, about the fic itself. :) I've whined a lot about how no one really seems to like this one - which is inaccurate, as I have had multiple people contact me via DA and so forth to say that they've started reading with this one, and they find it quite enjoyable. So what I'm really whining about is the lack of reviews on FF.net, when I think about it. Aaaand, whatever. I'll keep whining about that ON FF.net, because I can see how many hits the story gets so I know people are looking at it and I'm just choosing to be all guilt-pushy there, but I'll skip the whining elsewhere. I know you guys. We cool. :D

Oh, wow, that was a digression!

So to get back to what I was talking about, I haven't really posted much about this particular fic and what's gone into the rewrite. With TWC2 I did at least some partial listings of the things I'd changed from the original version, and now that TWC3 is winding down some, I thought it'd be fun to do the same with this one. I can be almost complete, too, since it's nearly over!

In a lot of ways this one is actually very similar to its progenitor: more than either of the others, I really used the original as an outline and just filled the details in more strongly. With TWC2, for instance, I had to change a number of the plot details to make them less hokey, or the order of the events to make them more understandable, etc. With this one, it's largely the same: the outline for both is:
I: Beth gets yelled at/humiliated by Drake and LP comes to her defense, and then she finds out about Drake being Darkwing;
II: Darkwing encounters Quackerjack, who uses his ray gun to minimize him (haha, I like that term), at which point DW gets away but LP and Gosalyn are struck by the change being more than just cosmetic;
III: Darkwing and Gos ditch Launchpad to fight Quackerjack, which they do and they win, and then at the end Beth... Well I can't say yet 'cause it's a spoiler. DUN-DUN-DUN!!! Okay, okay, you got me, I'll spill. She runs away with Negaduck and has his nega-babies. YEAH YOU HEARD ME!

Okay, so, aside from that minor point at the end which may possibly not be true, that's pretty straightforward. I ended up just doing each as 3-chapter acts instead of one chapter each. And I STILL could barely fit all the Beth stuff into the first act, man, even with three chapters :P I do go on and on! So now for the differences:

1. There NEEDED to be a lot more detail in the Beth section at the beginning, because initially Drake just was fed up with her babbling and snapped at her. I mean, it's simple and not fully OOC, but it did make him look like a gigantic jerk. And while Drake can be a gigantic jerk, there's a right way and a wrong way; and he needed to have a reason within his head that made him certain he was NOT being a gigantic jerk. At least not for no reason at all. :D I actually came up with the idea for the whole "nobody can be that BORING" etc while walking to work one day, about a year ago - it just clicked. I'd been sweating over rewriting the scene for MONTHS, not sure if I could make it actually work IC, and then it just fell together. This was also when I decided to really go and just *run* with the idea that DW would think Beth was a superhero, and this was his (flimsy, I admit) reason for letting her stick around and babysit when it wasn't really strictly necessary. So, all this actually took a lot of thought and in the original was way quicker and weaker.

2. In the same vein, I had to *really* punch up the confrontation between Drake and LP. I won't go into the details on it since that's not needed, but I did struggle to make it something that made sense for LP at this point, and it was a challenge. I'm still worried as to whether I pulled it off, though no one to date has told me I didn't. And, again, the discussion between Beth and LP afterwards was very much extended past the original. The idea of LP trying to "talk Beth up" to Drake started as my idea of a way to get him thinking of her more often and - since he ultimately falls for her himself - this might be the impetus to get him to look at her that way or that might just be the excuse he gives himself when he realizes he's doing that.

3. Beth's discovery of DW's secret identity was largely the same but I had to change some details, including why Gosalyn wasn't present (and it's an excuse to bring Honker into the series earlier! I wish I'd had a part for him in the rest of the fic) and just precisely how Beth stumbles onto it. I absolutely wanted her to stumble onto it, too, because as smart as she is, she doesn't think of unexpected things very often so although she probably would put two and two together EVENTUALLY, it wouldn't happen for quite some time. :)

4. I needed more for Launchpad to do in this fic (this is a theme in nearly all my rewrites; he needs more REAL screen time) and thus came the "Harv" sequence. In the original, Quackerjack dealt largely with just DW, though Launchpad did ultimately still rescue Darkwing after getting zapped by the ray. One thing missing in the rewrites: I have to admit that I loved all the Quackerjack and Mr. Banana Brain interactions that were in the original. I can't shoehorn them in unless they feel right, so there arent' nearly as many, and I kinda miss them. :)

5. Almost everything after Darkwing gets child-ized is pretty close to the original, just fleshed out; the phone conversation with Beth ended up a little longer than I intended it, but I think it was needed, because I wanted to show the ease that Beth and Launchpad have between themselves even if she's kind of resistant to it/doesn't realize it's there. I needed some kind of positive interaction between them that didn't involve angsting over Drake. ;) I also had to stick in some mounting tension with Henny, and LP really ought to encourage her to get a backbone, don't you think? In the nice, non-accusatory Launchpad style.

6. Played up the loneliness Launchpad feels when Gos and Darkwing only want to hang out with each other. I hadn't intended it to dovetail like that when I started out having him thinking about how he was kind of lonely in general (back in Act I), but it fit like a glove and was actually already in the original fic. Like I said, I just played it up.

7. The Darkwing and Gos caper is at once directly following the original fic (I'm even referencing it as I go, for the general structure and for content ideas to flesh out) and also incredibly different. Action is NOT MY THING. I'm not good at it. If this reads well, I'm lucky, because I really struggle with it. Things I want to address in the next chapter or two include why DW is acting like such a complete brat (there's a reason, it's not JUST that he actually is one :D), and of course how Gos is going to get free/how the good guys will win.

Finally, upcoming in the last chapter: How will Darkwing return to his normal age? Will Beth find out that Drake thinks she's a supervillain? Will she BECOME one??? What will Launchpad think when Darkwing gives his latest opinion on Beth? Will all of this actually be addressed? NO. :D Some of it will. There's a plot climax coming in Act III chapter 2, and then in the "aftermath" of chapter 3, we'll see the Beth and the Launchpad stuff come to a point. (Not the Beth/Launchpad stuff. Beth stuff and Launchpad stuff, and in some ways the two will meet.)

So in a sense I've always felt like it's not fair to have so much Beth in a story that doesn't really involve her, but in another sense, this is one of the most important stories in the first five so a lot HAS to happen. I hope you'll read on, good friends. :)