The Writing Bug

I've been writing like a fiend this past weekend :D I've actually been alternating between my two in-progress fics, TWC4 (working on Chapter 4) and "Those Daring McQuacks in their Flying Machines" (Act II chapter 2). I'm mostly done with the TWC4 chapter and perhaps half done with the other.

The unfortunate part is that I'm not really sure when I'm going to release them once they're done. Because I know I'm not going to get much, if any feedback, and I know it's going to be discouraging. And as long as I'm writing them for me and enjoying them, I'm happy. So I might just sit on this for a while, ride the wave and see how far it gets me. If I can make significant headway on "Flying Machines" this week that would be amazing. I started that one almost a year ago now and I barely have the presence of mind to work on it (this is only the 4th chapter out of, I suppose, 9 that I'm on right now), but it's nice to be in the "current" timeline sometimes instead of back in the rewrites.

It's neat, in any case. I'm not sure precisely when I started working on TWC4, I think it was the middle of last week but I can't quite remember; but I'm about 3600 words through THAT with one more scene to do so it'll probably top out around 4500 or so. And I started "Flying Machines" on Friday night, I think, and I'm a good 3,000 words into THAT by now. It'll likely get split into two chapters. There were a bunch of things I wanted to put into the first chapter of Act II that didn't fit, so I have to get them done first and THEN get to what I had planned for chapter 2... so it's definitely longer than intended. Act I had two chapters so I guess Act II will have 4. Oh well.

Hey, Hey, I wanna be a rock star

More TWC2 chapter notes! I realized I should've been doing these every time I put up a chapter. Maybe I'll start putting them up for TWC4 as I go. But I'm so behind... Anyway here's chapter 2 of TWC2, "Sea of Green".

References:

-Fic: TWC1, "My Kingdom for a Double-Plait Bolt", in the reference to Beth having given the wrong name when she introduced herself.
-The Simpsons (LP saying he'd square things before she arrived, then forgetting UNTIL she arrived, is based on Homer doing the same thing in a different situation)
- The Simpsons again - indirectly; I've always drawn a little bit of inspiration from Bart Simpson for Gosalyn, in terms of getting into trouble. So LP's overwhelming "And there's the tour of all of our fire extinguishers" and so forth really sort of starts with that.
- It doesn't really REALLY count as a reference since it's a part of nearly every episode of the show, but Beth references "Basil of Baker Street", the name of the book that became Disney's "The Great Mouse Detective". Since, of course, the statue that activates the transport chairs is Basil from GMD.

Okay, as a just sort of overview of this chapter, I found it really challenging to come up with a good reaction for Drake to have, and a reason why he'd let her stay and not just turn her down. I think it's kind of a reach, and it was a reach to keep it going afterwards, but... there had to be some reason, right? Better a slight reach than just no acknowledgement of the fact that it makes no sense for him to have a stranger babysit Gos, right? Bah. Sometimes I wish I'd come up with a different way to get Beth into the main cast. :P

Beth's mental description of Drake is me trying to put myself into her head and find him attractive. Since even though I love Drake dearly, I am completely not attracted to him in the slightest, this is always hard. XD

A return to Beth Mallard, from the last fic. Which I have to admit I thought was hilarious and have to bring up as often as I can. It's possibly my favourite throwaway gag in the whole fic.

Every so often I run into an awkward situation with Beth and Launchpad where he does something that I would almost swear should upset her or make her angry, and instead she thinks it's cute. Every time it happens I wonder if it makes sense that she'd think it was cute or if she should really be disappointed in him. I *think* it's okay, because Beth is rarely disappointed in anyone but herself, and when it comes to Launchpad she honestly thinks he hung the moon most of the time; so she lets him get away with a lot. That might not work quite right in other peoples' heads though, which... I can't really defend.

Awkward attempt at writing out a visual gag: Beth knocking over and almost breaking the framed picture. That would work SO much better if it was not a described action.

LP flirting with Beth, awwww XD Apparently, looking at this chapter... he does that a LOT. O_o

The bowling excuse was in the original fic, and I couldn't think of a better one (plus I just... really thought it was funny for some reason), so it remains. Flimsy excuses FTW!

I really enjoyed Beth's dramatic reaction to being hired as babysitter, somehow. He's all "Yeah yeah whatever" and she's all "Me so happy me want to cry D8"

Beth mentions "Basil of Baker Street" and not "The Great Mouse Detective" because I liked the idea that Basil is essentially Sherlock Holmes in this universe, and thus a well-known literary figure and known AS "Basil of Baker Street". Sure, the movie "The Great Mouse Detective" might have been made, but that's just ONE of the film adaptations of Basil. ...Or so I have decided. XD

If you were to ask me for my favourite moments of writing Drake or Darkwing I'd have to say my single fave line is the one he gives Beth about the view from OUTSIDE the house. That one, somehow, feels the most in-character; something Drake would slip in to be sarcastic and rely on whoever he's saying it to just not getting it. And in Beth's case, it works, because she just doesn't expect to be spoken to that way so it doesn't quite connect for her.

Beth's line "I would be pleased beyond belief to do that!" works best if you envision it being said very loudly and matter-of-factly. She's completely sincere, but she's also trying VERY hard to be noticed in her sincerity.

30 Days Meme day 12

Day 12 – Have you ever attempted an “adaptation” story of a favorite book or movie but set in a different fandom?

...noo... not REALLY but that doesn't mean I won't ever. And a few times I thought about doing it, I just never actually started. I cowrote half of an unfinished "Ranma 1/2" adaptation of "The Princess Bride" that broke the 4th wall a lot, and after I was in "Jesus Christ, Superstar" one summer I really wanted to do a DWD fanfic that vaguely followed the same storyline only it would be DW being sort of "discovered" and becoming verrrry popular, eventually lauded as the "Savior" of St. Canard, until the people turned on him. No, he wouldn't be crucified. XD

I actually had a badass "death/rebirth" scene in my head set to the title song, though. OMG. It's so badass. ...In my head. :P

One fic I thought for a long, long time I was going to do was a Reboot/DWD adaptation where they all get sucked into a computer wtih Megavolt as the villain. Various corresponding roles would be filled the various ways (DW as Bob, Megavolt as Megabyte, Gosalyn as Enzo, etc. I think I had Beth as Phong, lol) and they would encounter an internal virus, Hexaducksimal, hahahaha. It's too dated now though even though Reboot IS AWESOME STILL.

Two others I still might do: a story inspired by the Urusei Yatsura second movie, "Beautiful Dreamer", which I won't give any details on 'cause it would spoil the story, and a full-on series called "Quacktron Leap" which is a parody of "Quantum Leap" but instead of going through time, DW goes through dimensions with Sara Bellum as his guide and each dimension is an alternate of his own based on a fanfic. XD I still think that idea is awesome.

30 Days Meme day 8

Day 8 – Do you write OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they’re not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.

Finally a question that really really relates to me instead of me going "Not really", lol!

Ahem. Yes, yes I do. ;)

Well, I don't honestly know how successful I am in making my OCs not Mary Sues. I've had enough feedback about Beth over the years from many people who have said she's not one, so although that doesn't mean that there aren't people who DO think she is one and they're just not telling me, it at least means that there are enough people who think she's NOT and tell me so. :)

Other than Beth, my OCs are primarily either secondary characters (like Henny, Beth's family, etc) or else they're borderline Mary Sues. I never had any OCs at all for "Xena", but I mentioned that my X-Men character was a pretty blatant Sue for years and years. And even now, I've tweaked the heck out of her, but she's really still pretty borderline. (I don't actually write fic with her though so she doesn't precisely count.) The other borderline Sue is my "Ranma 1/2" persona, and she's really as I said, a persona. That's what makes her borderline - her name is Rebecca and she has a lot of my characteristics, exaggerated for comedy.

So. My methods of not making Sues is to give the characters as many reasonable flaws as I can. Then I cross my fingers and hope that I've made them into believable characters, with enough bad points to cross out the good points but not so many that they are hard to like... For instance:

-"Rebecca" the Ranma 1/2 persona is based on me, has my name, bears a physical resemblance to me, and is paired with Ryouga Hibiki. However, to counter all this I set the tone of the series (it's a "spin-off", remember) as very farcical, in the same vein as "Ranma" or even more so, as Rumiko Takahashi's earlier series "Urusei Yatsura". Rebecca is cheerful and exuberant and a lot of people like her, but that's partly because they only see the cheerful and exuberant part of her; in fact she's also very pushy, has a bad temper, and is really selfish. In a comical way, that's the thing that's hard to explain. She's very childlike; she loves other people and being with her friends, but she expects things to be a certain way, and when they are not, she can get indignant or even angry. The only person to see this most of the time is Ryouga, who consequently spends most of the series trying to get away from her. But she's in love with him, and decided after meeting him that they're going to be married, so dammit, THEY ARE GOING TO BE MARRIED. XD And becausee everyone likes Rebecca so much, he feels like he'll get the blame if he actually dumps her, so he puts up with her being around in the hopes that eventually she'll get sick of him and leave. XD

-Aquaflame, of the X-Men: she's got a lot of superpowers and initially (when I created her at age 10) she was one of those Mary Sues who I understand is somewhat rarer than the others, who gets injured a lot to get attention. (I had NO CONTACT with any other fans at the time so it amused me to find out that this is actually A Thing. XD) She's developed a lot in the past 20+ years. In efforts to make her a deeper character I gave her anger issues. XD She's very emotionally shut off and expresses a lot of her negative emotions through anger. I actually dont' think I've been successful in making her not a Sue, but I have tried. But yeah I don't use her anyway, so. ;)

With Beth - that's where I've put the most effort. In addition to making her neurotic (lovably so, I hope) and totally normal other than her intellect, I've made HUGE efforts to keep the tone of the series and the characterization of the canons as close as I could to the show. I think that's hard, because to me it involves getting inside their heads, and to do THAT you have to fill in a lot of blanks to make them more rounded as characters. But when I do that, I try to do it in a way that follows what we've seen in the show, rather than revealing secrets or making things darker or just making up stuff that seems like it would be cool. I also try to do it in a way that matches the depth I give to Beth - all the characters should feel like real people, but also like cartoon characters at the same time. I want them all to feel equally believable and equally at home in the same series, and I especially want Beth to fit the tone of "Darkwing Duck" and be someone that you could technically see being in an episode (albeit, a bit simplified).

I think that last goal is a bit lofty and I don't think I quite make it, but it's hard for ANY fanfic to accomplish that with an OC that becomes an addition to the main cast. Honestly I feel successful just if I have characters that people like to read about, whether it feels like an ep or not. :)

30 Days Meme day 5

Day 5 – If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a story, whether your “muse” or not, what did you do about it?

Welp, this will be a shorty. For real this time. :D

Basically, if it makes sense to have the character there and if I can think of a way for it to enhance the story, then I write it. If not then I do an alternate scenario in my head and don't write it out. XD

It's infrequent enough that I don't have to deal with it much anyway.

I will say that I've got something like five or six unofficial fic plots in my head - what I call "fanfic of my own fanfic" - with various badfic contrivances to get LP and Beth together. My standards for my fanfic fanfic are way lower than my actual fic canon. ;D That's basically my way of shutting Launchpad up. "OKAY LOOK I won't write this but I will make up an entire new plot so that you can get the girl. OKAY? Now LEAVE ME ALONE."

30 Days Meme, day 1

So here's the first question. I haven't thought this out in advance (I don't even remember what the question is) so get ready for some ramblin'...

Day 1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

Mmkay... Well, I started doing fanfic in my head, I think, when I was about 10 years old. I didn't write any of it down, I just had a Mary Sue character for old "X-Men" issues from the late 1970s up to about 1980. :D I think some of it stemmed from being kind of lonely and unpopular; you know, as many of us are. ;) Of course I had no idea of even the concept of fanfiction, back then, I just liked telling myself stories. I eventually let a friend of mine in on it, and she thought it was cool, and between the two of us we wrote I think two and a half actual "fics" which were really just scenes. And I wrote one looooong "novel" that took up an entire spiral notebook that was pretty godawful. But that's as far as that ever went.

In terms of actual first fandom I really *wrote* for, it was Darkwing Duck, straight up. In 1991 I was 13 and in 8th grade. I wrote one fanfic (again, not having any idea it was called that, or that other people wrote it), which was in narrative form, and it was after trying and failing to write a script for an episode that would've been centered around Bushroot trying to save the rainforest and DW not believing he was on the "good" side - I guess it would've been kind of ecoterrorism if I wrote it now but at the time it was just a half-assed idea that went nowhere. :) Plus shortly after I gave up on the idea, the episode "A Star is Scorned" aired, and that included a scene with Bushroot saving the rainforest, lol. So I was like "NEVER MIND THEN D:" So since I wasn't able to do that, I wrote a single fic instead, and it sat on my hard drive for three years before I discovered the Internet.

In between that time I invented Beth (somewhere around 1992), who again existed purely in my head until summer or so of 1994. This was when I got onto AOL and discovered such a thing as Fandom, and I posted my DWD fic and wrote a really, really, really awful "DuckTales" fic that I hope does not currently still exist on the net. (It will never be rereleased. The DWD fic was actually not that bad considering, and is on my site somewhere.) Having put the DuckTales fic up and gotten some positive response I decided to forge onwards and write down the Beth stories I'd thought out, and thus began The Webfoot Chronicles. Yep - in 1994. :)

As for what it was about that fandom that drew me in: well, a combination of my love for DWD, my feeling that I could actually "get" the tone of hte series (arguable when I first started writing), and the people I met on AOL. Kim McFarland/Negaduck9 was among them and she was TREMENDOUSLY supportive. She had a lot to do with it, as did a few other people I met during that time period (Kevin, Mike, RRQuest, and others). And the Internet was a brave new world and it was exciting to be posting and getting feedback. The DWD fandom wasn't really tremendously active at the time but it was at least moderately, so I got a lot of readers and a lot of friends back then. :)

There we go, that was kinda painless!

This is not a post

Fic update! I posted the first chapter of TWC4 at FF.net and AO3. Since it's a replacement of the chapter that is already there on FF.net, they won't register it as an update until I actually add a new chapter, so this is the "unofficial prerelease". :P I am, however, hoping to have chapter 2 done before the end of the month. :)

I'm so relieved to get this done. I had actually planned on working on this during October, but stress at the beginning of the month basically gave me artistic block on all fronts. I've only JUST started writing again. Hoping this is the start of something good! :)

If I can get to chapter 2 quickly enough (I don't know if that will work or not though) I'm going to work on "Those Daring McQuacks". I have the structure outlined and I tried starting act 2 a couple of months ago but i stalled on the scene. I was able to write it, it just wasn't paced particularly well and I was having trouble with what I wanted to say. I hope I can pick it up again and fix it.

Anyway, I don't think anyone checks this blog if I dont' put up links or reminders, but just in case people do, fic update message and general ramblings. ^_^ Hi!

Guess what I did all freakin' afternoon/night?

I wrote that story. I wrote that GOLDARNED story.

I wrote an 11K word story guys. Why can't I do that on TWC? (I'll tell you why, becuase this had no plot, this is just romance. I can crank that out no problem, TWC fics have action plots and those screw me up.)

I initially said I was writing it just for me, but I wrote so much that I feel like I should od something with it. I'm not sure what yet. If you are interested in reading this fic, please lemme know. I think it stands on its own, and I can fill in the blanks on it in an introduction/notes at the start, and I don't think it actually spoils the Christmas fic. And now I don't actually have to write the middle story. I mean, I might anyway, but I don't have to...

I think my main reason to write it would be because Candy is in it, and though she's in the one I just did too she has a much larger role in the middle fic. And when I wrote her scene in this one I realized that I love her.

But I also love Beth/LP romance and this is freaking FULL of that s***.

Don't you just love it when you make a typo in your subject line?

Seriously. I just noticed a major one in that last entry. ("Throw up your ahnds" I think it was.)

I blame MS Word's autocorrect features, especially the ones in Outlook. They're making me lazy as hell about my typing. :P Me - and AMERICA IN GENERAL!

So, not a lot to mention; I have been getting some lovely gift art lately ^_^ I am embarking on a quest to do more gift art myself for the month of March, and this is probably going to inevitably slow down my efforts at regular updates to my fics (I technically am working on two at the moment). I'd like to get at least one chapter done on each per month, but with the art thingie, that might not happen.

The good part is that I have a lot already written and it just needs betaing, so there will be SOME updates this month. :)

So, also got some very nice reviews on the first chapter of TWC3, thank you so much guys! :D I'm going to go back to an idea I had with TWC1, and start putting "deleted" scenes up here. I didn't have any for TWC2, since that one was shorter, but I need to do some trimming on 3. I am longwinded. :P I don't really think that's a major flaw, but I do like to keep my chapters down to 4,000 words or less - especially if they're not action-heavy. If it's just a bunch of character exposition I want them shorter. 4,000 words is actually a buttload of lot, but it's my ceiling. I hope anyway. :)

Well, this is a long entry considering I have very little or nothing to say! See you guys later, maybe later this week I hope!

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. ;)

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. :)

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

Final update of 2010!

Definitely the final fic update anyway. I say that because on the surface I'm like "but maybe I'll update this blog before the year is over!"

Deep down inside though I know I won't. ;)

Anyway, I had made myself a promise that I was going to finish "Sea of Green" before the end of the year. I planned it out and was pretty sure I could finish the whole thing in 8 chapters and so I paced it and vowed to have the 8th chapter finished by this evening, if not before.

And guys, I finished the 8th chapter. :)

Unfortunately I realized with my last update that this is a 9-chapter fic. Ah, well. :P This gives me time also to polish up the first chapter of the third installment, "Forever Young". I have about maybe 2/3 or so of it written; the problem is that I don't know how long the chapter should be. I'm not sure of the pacing of the first act of that fic - or of any of it, really. I know how I want the first act to end. I'm NOT sure how much needs to get crammed into the first chapter though. Oh well, gettin' there.

I also plan on working on the next NEW, non-rewritey fic. Sadly I believe that my readership for the non-rewritey fics is down right now because everyone who was following them is in a major time crunch, especially as regards El Interneto. So I guess that's code for "I should focus on the rewrites instead." My goal for 2011 is to get at least two fics done, which I suppose means "Forever Young" (rewrite) and "Those Daring McQuacks in Their Flying Machines" (non-rewrite), but it might actually end up meaning FY and its sequel. Just focus on getting the rewrites done. I dunno.

I hope to write more in here next year. At least I've been sorta consistent this second half of the year... it's not frequent but it's steady, and that's something! But I want to get more content up. Good luck, huh? :D

I think that is all... Best wishes, happy New Year, and lalala all of that. :)

Hope Mama gets the shopping done

Well, another Christmas has come and gone. Which is OK. This one was nice enough. :)

I had a kind of a Darkwing-y Christmas, with finally receiving both the second set of the Darkwing DVDs (it has been a while) and also getting the first 4-issue arc of the comic series in the paperback collection. FINALLY. You guys, this is awesome squared. ^_^ The nicest part is that I can read and enjoy it without feeling a need to view it as "canon". I was really worried that, since there is a continuity in this series, I was going to take it as canon and watch my AU be utterly obliterated (I'm a bit of a canon fiend... I find it very hard to go against canon unless there is something I REALLY dislike), but this is more just a new series I can really enjoy. I told my husband it's like really good illustrated fanfic that has an "officially approved by Tad Stones" stamp on it. Awesome without being definitive, you know? :)

Since I have a few minutes here - though probably fewer than I will need - I thought I'd do a characterization post. It's been a while since I've done one, I've been saying for eons now that I'm going to do one for Bushroot, and here it is. ^_^ I'm finishing up "Sea of Green", which is the Bushroot "episode" of TWC. I will say that i don't quite have his voice with this one. I'm not saying I feel like I'm writing him blatantly OOC, but I don't feel like his dialogue is precisely him.

I actually feel like I have a pretty good handle on Bushroot's dialogue, when I hear it. He's whiny (especially his earlier eps, Tino Insana really pushes the whine in his voice) and kind of wishy-washy, and actually very cute in those regards. The problem is I'm just not translating that properly in my head. :P Maybe that's proof that what I'm trying to write doesn't *really* fit for Bushroot... I don't know.

Anyway, in some ways I'm glad I've waited a while to do a characterization post, because the way I've been writing for Reggie has developed a bit since I started writing this fic. I've gone back and rewatched some earlier eps (as I said), read some other fanfics, and just generally refined how I thought Beth and Reggie would interact. Initially I had him a lot more sort of semi-harmless, and motivated almost entirely by loneliness. At this point in my rewrite I think his underlying motive is still loneliness but also a pervading sense of injustice and unfairness, that the world (and Darkwing) keep dumping everything on him. Some of this has to do with Cheezey (among other authors) putting into words a view I realized I'd held for quite some time, which is that Bushroot refuses to take responsibilities for the things he brings on himself. He hates that Darkwing comes and ruins everything and throws him in jail - well geez, never occurs to you to maybe STOP COMMITTING CRIMES, Reggie? Admittedly, Darkwing would likely never *believe* that he'd stopped, but so far, he's been right. ;)

Reginald Bushroot, pre-accident, strikes me as a guy who is used to being stepped on and pushed around. he's never had any way to hit back. He has this accident (sort of; that's the term I'm using but it really was more of "unintented side effects of a successful experiment", but that's long, so we'll say "accident") and he gets powers, and suddenly he can push OTHER people around. He's not the first thwarted little man to quickly go out of control once he can actually hurt back. There's so much hurt and resentment boiling inside that guy that he completely doesn't even see. Reginald Bushroot is a nurturing, pacifist, gentle, caring man who hates other people and this dichotomy gives him such a sense of cognitive dissonance that he fails to recognize the second half of it. In his own mind, he's a guy who continues to take the lumps that fate keeps giving him and who sure, has made some mistakes, but no one ever lets him make up for them without judging him first.

And he's lonely. As far as he's concerned he doesn't have a friend, he has friendly underlings (he clearly adores his plants, and as much as he sends them out to do his dirty work, he's horrified and grief-stricken when they get destroyed) and pets, like Spike. Darkwing points out that Spike would be happy to be Bushroot's equal and friend, but really, Spike is NOT that. None of the plants have the "foot-in-the-human-world" that Bushroot has, and this must be maddening to him. This is clearly why he's tried more than once to create other "mutants" to join him - Rhoda Dendron, Gosalyn, and even Posie the potato. It's not enough to try to woo Rhoda as a duck, because he is NOT a duck, so he has to make her like himself. It's not enough to have plants for friends, because he is NOT a plant, so he has to make his own bride out of a plant and other things. Etc, etc. (Oh sure, I know he didn't *set out* to make Gosalyn a mutant plant-duck but the fact that the formula worked that way indicates it was intended to do much the same thing anyway - give heightened intelligence to whatever plant life he used it on, such as Hedgey, even though it failed.)

SO. I might not be able to write in his voice, but I've been trying to incorporate all this stuff into "Sea of Green". His motivation for his actions isn't about monetary gain - and aside from when he's with the Fearsome Five I don't see him acting for money, it all seems to be stealing for other purposes (gifts for Posie, fake money so he can buy plant supplies, screwing with people at Christmas, etc) - but because once again, he's been rejected. THIS IS NOT FAIR, and in the vein of someone who is tired of being expected to be a certain way he decides to really show them just exactly HOW much "that way" he can be. Then upon meeting someone who seems sympathetic - it could be anyone really - he has a new best friend. But I wanted to keep an element of danger in there - don't reject this guy, because if you are not with him you are against him, and he will not like you if you are against him. And years and years ago a friend of mine pointed out to me that as much as everyone seems to view Reggie as the most "harmless" member of the Fearsome Five, he is to date the only one of them who has actually killed ANYONE. Even including Negaduck, I think. I mean, Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson seem pretty totally dead.

Which is amazing when you think about it. DWD as a series had some really gruesome deaths that were totally glossed over by the people around them. Like the SHUSH agents made into candy. GAH! XD

My final feeling: I love Bushroot. And I do think he could reform. But not without a lot of therapy, anger management, and general support group work. One thing he has to do is accept all of his actions - everything he's ever done no matter what the consequences. That'll be hard because since his accident he's made a lot of really bad decisions. And ya know, if it were me at the end of this story, I'd send him to jail. We'll see what happens though. ^_~

Spoiler-free

So, lately I've been picking up some new readership with my rewrites. Which I don't think I ever really expected would happen.

So just to be inclusive I'm going to make a new tag for this blog, either "spoiler-free" or "spoilers", and use it as appropriate to indicate what is and is not safe for new readers. Because I give stuff away all over this blog. XD

I'm just not sure yet what would be better, as in, "quicker".