My Uncle thought he was St. Jerome...

Guess who saw "Ghostbusters" in the theatre this evening? Yeah it's me :D At first when it started I had a thought, like, "Is this going to be worth it? Am I just putting import onto something that isn't really that important?" But OH MAN was it good on the big screen. It was just fantastic. I haven't ever seen GB in the theatre -I am just SLIGHTLY too young. (I did see Back to the Future in theatres when it came out, though. AND THAT WAS AMAZING.)

Anyway, that is all. I may not get to see Shaun of the Dead, but I got to see Ghostbusters. :D

On a completely unrelated topic, I've been sketching - both artistically and bio-type - on an AU Beth recently. I'm putting up the first batch of sketches on DA and I thought I'd take the opportunity to expand on it here, since... I can. :)

So, waaaay back when I was writing "All About Elizabeth", I included a gratuitous scene that took place when Beth was 18, attending Duckburg University, and working as a librarian on campus. She has a very brief encounter with Scrooge McDuck and tells herself she'll tag along with him on adventures and change her life, but of course, she does not. Well, mentally I then proceeded to create an entire AU where she DOES, and her life is - not all that changed. :D Frothinglizard on DA used this idea somewhat, with my blessing, in a really wonderful set of pics and comics. My idea was entirely different and I'm finally kind of going to elaborate on it. With the note that nothing is ever going to come of this: I'm not going to write it out. I have NO ideas. It's basically making Beth a DuckTales OC instead of a DWD OC, and the fact is, I can't write for DuckTales. I don't do adventure plots - I'm okay with action/superhero/comedy plots, and even those I struggle with and take a long time to do. But adventure, like in old school DT... nope. Just doesn't come to me. The only part of the idea I'm actually able to develop is the stuff that relates to - yeah, you saw this coming, right? - Beth and Launchpad and how they relate to one another.

Basically, Beth at 18 is even more awkward than at 25. I established in AAE that she makes a lot of her own clothes - she actually is quite good but you wouldn't guess it to see her in what she wears at that age. She was going through a thing where she preferred very large clothing, particulary shirts - she was uncomfortable in anything that didn't hide her figure - so it looks as if she's a very shoddy seamstress when actually, she knows what she's doing. She just doesn't really get how awful the badly-fitting clothes really look on her, b/c the alternative makes her uncomfortable. The rest of her apperarance is largely the same, just... perhaps a bit more disheveled. Well, in the AU, she manages to talk her way onto Scrooge's plane as he departs for some adventure in the jungle, and immediately wishes she hadn't, since she has no idea what to do.

She meant to introduce herself as Eliza, and reinvent herself with that new identity, but she screws up and gives her name as Beth on instinct. A bit later she meets Launchpad as he is piloting the plane, and she's instantly gone on him. He's friendly and handsome and charming, and completely overlooks her. They get through the adventure, find the treasure - after nearly losing it due to Beth misreading something - but then she figures it out and all is well. Scrooge isn't too happy with her screw-up, but LP sticks up for her and says she's the one who figured everything out, so he reluctantly hires her (for next to nothing) as his researcher. For a couple of years she does this and also puts herself through school at the same time (which irritates Scrooge because every so often she either opts out of a trip due to exams, or else has to bring her books along with her to study).

Over the next few years she and LP get to be - well, not quite close, but on very good terms. She's completely devoted to him, but she also gets enough of a backbone to speak her mind sometimes. She's just about 21 when Gizmoduck shows up. She and Fenton actually get along quite well and play geeky math games. She realizes early on that Fenton is Gizmoduck, though it doesn't change much. A little while after this LP leaves for St. Canard (I haven't thought of any details as to why); she's hurt by this but doesn't tell him so.

So, part two. After finishing school, Beth starts in teh real world with a real job, which despite all her science education ends up being working for Scrooge in a higher capacity. By this point, having gotten used to dealing with him, she has a much thicker skin than she used to and her confidence in herself is a bit higher. I don't know much about what she does but it involves a lot of travel, plus I think she handles some of the stock investments. Years go by, and she figures out a lot of things for herself and grows up a lot, so that by the time she's 25 in *this* universe, she's quite a different person. Fundamentally still a chatterbox and prone to getting nervous under personal circumstances, she's better equipped to deal with people (and she looks great).

Four years after LP left for St. Canard, she travels there on a business trip - for the first time, oddly! She goes to Europe more often than to St Canard - and gets LP's address from Fenton so that she can look him up. They reunite very briefly and amicably in Drake's house but since she has to run to the first of her meetings (being held over several days), she invites LP to dinner in a few nights.

The funny thing is, when I came up with this AU (which was really just a way to occupy my time and explore a different characterization for Beth), I kept it in my usual rule of Duckverse stuff - which is to say, very close to the tone of the show, nothing "adult" or mature, and my big rule for my DWDverse is that nobody has sex. Sex doesn't even exist. (This isnt' to say I haven't put any thought into it - 'cause I have, from time to time - but it's more like as an exploration of sexual behaviour and how it stems psychologically, mainly from Beth, and next to no explorataion of sexual *themes* from any characters in this show.) Somewhere, though, over the past few days this one... got away from me. *blush* Which is probably why I've been drawing stuff for it and expanding it somewhat. I'm not sure what point I'm going to go up to, but... well, there's more to this storyline, and I'll probably share it at some point soon. But, fair warning. :P

IS 100th POST, IS GOOD

SO THIS IS MY 100th POST IN THIS BLOG :D :D :D

PARTY!

Uh. I have really got almost nothing interesting to say, and almost no time to write it in.

So instead have a playlist! :D

The past few days I've been getting sucked into music that "fits" certain environments in the fics, and mainly LP/Beth ones. I sort of started getting into this a while back with this pic. The idea for THAT came from the end of "All About Elizabeth", when I casually mentioned that LP spent like, two days making a mix tape for the car ride home with Beth, and all the songs have, er, "subtle suggestions" to them - the first being "Take a Chance On Me" by ABBA, though it's not named.

The idea of an actual mix tape that he's like "Oh, here, made ya this" and gives to Beth kind of tickled me so I returned to the thought a few more times and then, after doing that picture, came up with a few others. Only five though. :P So here they are, plus a few extras that I am just sticking in for the fun of it!

These are HEAVILY 80s-oriented, for the record. I wouldn't put anything post-1991 on there anyway, due to chronology of the fics, but I kinda think that both Launchpad *and* Beth are musically stuck a few years behind everyone else. :D

Take a Chance On Me, ABBA

Do You Believe In Love, Huey Lewis and the News (He'd better HOPE she doesn't figure it out while listening to this. It's just aggressive enough to scare her off. XD) (Side note: AIN'T NOBODY BETTER DIS HUEY LEWIS, OKAY?? I LOVE HIIIIIM)

Kiss on my List, Hall and Oates (eeeheehee, I think this song is adorable and SO 80s)

You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, Leo Sayer Well... this version is by the Wiggles. :D I like this version more! It's an awesome arrangement! yes including Wags the Dog popping up and barking :P COME IN IT'S IN GREEK how can you not love it? :D ...Yeah. It is *so* obvious I have kids.

Somethin' Stupid, Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra (Pictures of Grace Kelly FTW.)

Anyway I figure that one is the last one on the tape - there are others in between, I just don't know what they are yet. :) And that's, yeah, that's the one where she finally goes "....Oh."

I think I've probably either mentioned or even linked to these before, but this song is my theme for TWC4:
Strange Magic, ELO There's a reason, it kinda goes with a scene, you can't just plug it in unfortunately. (and since the scene's pacing is in my head, I can't plug it in even after the fic is written. Sadness.)
And I know I've mentioned before, I listen to the Bee Gees for some of my inspiration... You don't have to like this stuff, I just have a liking for 70s makeout music. :D
How Deep is Your Love
More Than a Woman

How can I actually like these songs when I hate that falsetto so much? It's like nails on a chalkboard :P

Anyway... any thoughts? Did I win anyone over to 80s music who didn't like it before? Did I make any new Huey Lewis fans? If not I can throw more REALLY AWESOME songs at you. And he has great hair! VERY fluffy! :D

When you can't wake up in the morning, 'cause your bed lies vacant at night

So, everyone who actively follows me here is on DeviantART, but there might be some pop-ins from time to time... I dunno... just in case, I'm posting this here too. :)

Basically, there's a "10 Things About Your OC" meme that floats around and resurfaces from time to time. I did one for Beth back in October, and then everyone else did cooler ones for their OCs and I felt inadequate, so I've finally gone back and done a second one. *G* I think the only reason I felt inadequate was because I couldn't think of many things that hadn't already been mentioned in fics (mostly in All About Elizabeth, which is full to the brim of Beth's little quirks and secrets) so I felt like a lot of what I DID include was either too short to be interesting, or else just plain uninteresting.

Either way, I didn't post the original here so I'm gonna rectify that, and throw in my "Round 2" for good measure. This one is, I think, a little more engaging.

The first ten:

1. Despite constantly repeating that since her middle name, Marilynn, has two "n"s and therefore she isn't named after Marilyn Monroe, she actually is. Her parents are both film buffs and named all their children after classic movie stars; Beth is named for Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.

2. Her birthday is in July. The date has never been specified, but it's sometime in the second half of the month.

3. She thinks math humor is hilarious.

4. She comes from a science and math background but is not at all mechanically-inclined; she gets the equation and formula parts but not the engineering stuff at all. She could probably kick some butt doing chemically-related stuff for Darkwing but he's more gadget-oriented and she is NOT.

5. She has a long, long list of things she's afraid of, many of which are animals/creepy-crawlies (spiders, bugs, monkeys, etc) and the rest of which are experiences. As a friend of mine put it, she's "afraid of everything" and hates to take risks.

6. She will forgive anyone anything if she gets a good enough explanation, no matter how many times a person has done the same thing to her over and over. There is no "last chance" with Beth.

7. She is a decent singer, a bad actress (and a pretty awful liar), and a godawful dancer.

8. She used to wear her hair short as a little girl, but grew it out after she noticed how much her mother enjoyed styling her older sister's hair.

9. She has contacts but dislikes using them, partly because of the way they feel but mostly because she uses her glasses as a kind of safety device to hide behind.

10. She got really into the idea of actually inventing time travel for a little while in the 80s.



Next ten:

11. She will read anything she can get her hands on. She doesn't really have a favourite genre, though in terms of fiction she prefers classical literature if she can get it; she doesn't like standard "Supermarket Checkout" novels but she'll read them if nothing else is around. The only things she won't read are horror, like Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Peter Straub, etc.

12. She actually doesn't get a lot of pop culture references, especially from the 70s/early 80s (when she was younger), because her parents didn't let her watch much television. She has since caught up on a few things, but she's still kind of ignorant of a lot of it, so sometimes references will go over her head.

13. One of the things she got into as a kid was Monty Python, although she was unaware of how ribald they sometimes got since she'd only heard their albums and not seen their TV shows. Once she did and she saw some of the racier material, she was a little put off.

14. Related to #13, she's kind of a prude. XD

15. She has really messy handwriting. This has been sort of hinted at in my fics but I've never stated it outright. Especially when she does something in a hurry, you can hardly read it. Drake finds this exasperating since it can slow him down; Launchpad likes to tease her about it.

16. She will never, never, ever be a superhero (or villain for that matter) because she doesn't like being involved in the action. On the rare occasions she has been involved, she's really not enjoyed it. However she will do whatever Darkwing or Launchpad ask her to do, so if one of them asks for her help, she'll provide it.

17. Her relationship with Drake actually gets very complicated since it's almost completely unstated. He does end up liking her, but still gets exasperated with her. However as time goes on he's increasingly fond of her and in the end sort of comes to see her as a sister. A truly exasperating sister he just wants to shake sometimes, but then again, most siblings seem to inspire that kind of thing. *G* But as is said, he never tells Beth he feels this way, so there's always a wall of misunderstanding between them.

18. She was almost entirely unaware of the Supervillains in St. Canard before she met Drake and Launchpad. She wasn't really much aware of Darkwing, either. (Oddly enough she knows all about Gizmoduck.) She knew of Bushroot, the Liquidator, and Negaduck but that was all. Mostly this is because she still doesn't watch much TV and when she reads the news she flips around to what interests her. She was interested in Bushroot's story because she almost joined the botany/biology department at St. Canard U. Liquidator couldn't be avoided after he turned all the water hard, and Negaduck... well, everyone knows Negaduck. She did NOT know much about the Fearsome Five because she was out of the city when they took over, and when she came back she only picked up the basics.

19. The OC she'd get along best with in Darkwing fandom is Ariana McCawber (DisneyPsycho's character). They did meet and hit it off but because of spoilers they don't hang out now.

20. Beth finds it very hard to believe in anything she can't see and explain. I haven't ever thought of religion for her but I suppose if I did, she might be an atheist or most likely an agnostic. As it is she can't believe in magic, ghosts, or unexplainable phenomena and she has a very hard time when confronted with these things.

PS: I've been wanting to do a "Tips for Drawing Beth" post for a while now (which is kind of a joke b/c *I* don't even draw her consistently, lol) so I might do.

Thanks to Fanarts!

Hi guys, this'll finish out the shout-outs to the gift fan stuff I've gotten over the past few years. ^_^ Since there's not a lot of just art stuff, I'll just do it all in one post.

1- I can finally rave about this pic b/c it's finally online! LadyNiniane drew me this piece of fanart for "All About Elizabeth" a few years ago. I have no place to house fanart and I hadn't been able to find it online anymore so I was kind of stuck and unable to share it. When I found it in her gallery at Negaverse.net I was delighted! Yay!

I love this piece; it's moody and thematic and I love the thing with the shadows. This fic was so hard on both Beth and Launchpad, was hard on ME to write (just b/c of the time it took; it wasn't an emotional toll, lol), and so this was a great reward to have LadyNiniane enjoy it so much that she was inspired to draw from it. ^_^

2- This piece by The Illustrious Crackpot is suitably hilarious, since Crackpot is a hilarious and high-energy artist. I've been trying to go in chronological order through her entire gallery for the past month or so. I'm like, maaaaaybe 2/3 of the way through by now. :D It's well worth it and so much fun and she has a great series called "Madness In A Box" that is very worth reading and getting into.

The pic of Beth was a sort of "welcome to dA" piece she did for me. I love it because I look at it and think it's probably approximately ten seconds before Beth's head explodes from sheer embarrassment. XD

3- DeathByMarshmallows did a random drive-by sketch of Beth along with her fan character and a couple of others by other artists/writers. There is nothing so awesome as random and unexpected gift art, under any circumstances, and this one is just so darn cute. Marty is DBM's character and I love that she's braiding Beth's hair. ^_^ This whole "slumber party and they're all BFFs" vibe just gives me giggles, even though Pixi (in the front left, with the tattoos) is giving Beth a look like she's going to duct tape her mouth closed in a few more seconds. XD DBM is also doing a commission for me that I will absolutely post about when it's finished!

So - thanks to all three of you lovely ladies and keep on with the art; I'm a huge fan of everything all three of you do and I would be even if you didn't draw Beth. (But I probably wouldn't mention you here since this is a Beth-centric blog. Just sayin', is all.)

Don't Say No to the Incredible Medicine Show

More notes for AAE! Chapter 3 of Act I (or chapter 5 on ff.net)...

References:

-Dr. Camelback has some origins in a book called "Orphans of Chaos" by John C. Wright, though I have to admit that it's been so long now since I've read the book that I don't remember precisely how.
-Pattie, Violet, and Frieda are names from Charles Schulz's "Peanuts". They're all secondary characters who, I think, eventually got dropped. :P
-Nicola is slightly inspired by a character in "Fire and Hemlock" by Diana Wynne Jones (a girl named Nina).

I reference Beth as being "small for her age" in this section. She stays on the skinny side all her life, but I picture her as starting out tiny and then sprouting up like a weed in terms of height when she hits a certain age. Beth is not outrageously tall, but she's perhaps a bit taller than she should be, if that makes sense.

Poor Beth, getting taken advantage of from the first. The idea that a group of kids, the oldest of which is only 7, would be left alone to wander about for themselves was an effort to reinforce what Beth says before this flashback starts - that the people in charge forgot that high intelligence doesn't translate at all into maturity. A smart kid is still a kid.

Note the subtle statement in this scene that Beth does not wear glasses at age 7. I didn't have a good way to say that outright (it would've been weird to describe her as "not wearing glasses", after all) so it's a little bit subtle and perhaps easier to forget. I bet most readers imagine Wee Little Beth with glasses. (I almost do myself.)

Geez, Camelback is such a d***. ;D

I don't have a whole lot to say about the stuff at Pinny's; none of it is based on any real experience in my life so I can't talk about that, and it's fairly straightforward, I think. I hope it's not over the top; although I've never had these actual experiences, I've had strained relationships with adults (as I think many people have) and I've had trouble joining social circles (as I think many have, again) so I'm assuming these are somewhat familiar themes even if the events are themselves particular or perhaps a bit melodramatic.

Beth's mass-shunning in the cafeteria is a little reminiscent of a scene in Amanda Rohrssen's "The Other McCawber Girl", which was not intentional, though I will admit for full disclosure that I am pretty sure I had read that scene by the time I wrote this fic. I wasn't thinking of that, thogh, but rather of the general experience of being an outcast and being ignored. Beth's experience here, it should be noted, is not based at all on who she is but just on her being a stranger; it's not a personal reaction, it's just a mass ignoring. This almost uniformly typifies her experiences throughout this story: she's infrequently directly targeted, and much more often just overlooked, which I think is a common theme in growing up. Everyone gets targeted at some point, but being totally ignored - although less dramatic - can be painful too.

I wondered what to name Beth's three roommates for a while and then decided on the names from "Peanuts". Once I'd do that the personalities kind of dropped into place, especially Frieda's who clearly had to have naturally curly hair and also be a big of a braggart.

Beth ruminates on what she'd done to be sent away - we don't learn until later why she's so certain that this is what has happened - and she reflects that she could promise to change and be whatever her mother wanted if she could come back. This is also a recurring theme for Beth; she keeps, in her head, promising to change herself to be what other people want. I think it's noteworthy that she never ever does this.

Beth's staying at Pinny's over Thanksgiving is not a "Harry Potter" reference in case anyone was wondering, though on rereading it kind of looks that way. *shrug*

The "sad story about 2 older kids who fell in love but then died" is 'Romeo and Juliet'. I thought that this might be about what a 7-year-old would get out of it: the very bare bones of the story, with the rest being written in such apocryphal language and about such complicated things that it would basically go over her head.

As mentioned above, Nicola has roots in a girl named Nina from a Diana Wynne Jones novel. There's nothing specific that she does that mirrors this character, but Nina has a certain exuberance and a liking for imaginativeness, as well as a falling out with the main character, that were in my mind when I was thinking of characteristics for Beth's first "friend". The name, Nicola, has no significance.

Let's Take a Trip Together

Hi folks, here's some chapter notes for AAE! We're up to chapter two here (that's chapter two of Act I, or the fourth chapter I posted on FF.net if you're following at home. Or um... at FF.net, rather).

References:
- "The Simpsons" for Eeeeyelloooo? Not that they made it up, exactly, that's just what I was thinking of.
- "Who is this?" is a direct reference to "Seinfeld". If you've seen any of the episodes that use that (there are several) you'll know exactly how Gosalyn says it.
- "Comic Book Capers", for the engine knocking.
-Professor Pinfeather's School for Gifted Youngsters is a reference to "The Uncanny X-Men" - Professor Xavier's School for... etc.

Ah, the start of the school year... and covering your books. I hated that and usually managed to put it off for about a month, or until I got a note sent home.

I love how obnoxious Gosalyn is on the phone here. It's like the precise counterpoint to how annoyingly neurotic Beth is being - Gos is perfectly winding her up. My favourite way to write Gosalyn is by having her not take anything seriously.

I can't remember if there are any episodes that have LP working on the ThunderQuack when he's depressed (I'm rusty on a lot of the middle-to-late eps these days), but I know I've used it a lot among my fics for this reason. So hey. Inner continuity, anyway.

The idea that Beth could be easily swayed by being asked to do homework kind of comes, I think, from "The Simpsons"... I know someone used it first, manipulating someone into doing something by calling it homework. "The Simpsons" seems most likely. Any time I know I was inspired by something indirectly but I can't remember what it was, I usually assume it was "The Simpsons". :P

This scene here with Beth trying to think of her regrets is like a big teaser of the rest of the fic. I left out a few things, such as Ariana (I did know at the time that I would be bringing her in), which was intentional because I wanted her to be a surprise. The first release left out some things I didn't know I would include, but I've added them in now that the fic is complete.

So we start the flashbacks. The hardest thing in writing the flashbacks, for me, was setting them up. Trying to figure out what should be in the flashback and what should be monologued by Beth was tricky; I also always wanted to make it clear that Beth was not *telling* Dr. Mortimer everything that we see in the flashbacks, which was hard since I didn't want to tell every story twice (her words, and her experience). So there had to be enough crossover to show the difference, but not too much, and I had to guess at what would sound better coming from her and what would be better shown through narrative. Sometimes I think Beth just goes on too long. Then again, looking at these notes, I guess we know whose fault that is. :P

I probably don't have to explain this but Beth doing everyone else's work for them is a continued theme into her adult life, at least up to when she quits Bindler's Hardware. She'd still be doing it happily for Drake, if his line of work related to her expertise in any way, too.

Beth and being nice to people in hopes they'll be nice back - this is the very first sign of how jaded she is underneath, and how much she's been hiding that from her friends, family, and self. Actually it took *me* by surprise a little.

Part of why this fic is long (not the only reason... just *part*) is because Dr. Mortimer asks questions that aren't strictly related to the plot. There's a lot of filler conversation in here. I have a bad habit in my fics of letting the characters take over the dialogue - sometimes I really have to PUSH them to get them to go where I want, and Mortimer was like that a lot. Then again, I didn't want him to seem TOO insightful and always ask just the right questions - that's a little too convenient.

If Only I Don't Suffocate

Does anyone else want to write Epic Fanfic based on "Bend Or Break" by Keane? Surely not just me. (Not for DWD, though, it doesn't strike me with the right tone.)

Anyway! I have the next batch of notes for AAE here, would've had them sooner but I only unpacked and set up my home computer this week since we moved a month ago. :)P Here's the lengthy blabfest for Act I, Chapter 1!

***

References:

- "The Music Man"; as I said, Irene Webfoot is a nod to Mrs. Paroo from this musical. The line "an' yer changin' the subject" is a callback to the one song that Mrs. Paroo (kind of) sings on, an argument between her and her daughter where she is accused of changing the subject herself.
- "Donnie Darko" is the source of 'Yarn Barn', which is where Donnie's older sister works.

Man, there is stuff in here that I had forgotten I had already started by this point. Somehow that makes me feel awful. I didn't realize I was writing the therapy stuff this early... This fic just went on forever, didn't it? :P Not to mention I originally had Beth thinking how at this rate she'll need a month before she can see LP and Drake again... and then she's actually gone for nearly *two* months. Ay yi yi. The time got away from me, what can I say... I changed the line to "six months" just so it's less obvious. :P (And then I mention it here because I LIKE TO MAKE MYSELF LOOK DUMB apparently)

First scene with Beth and Irene, in which Beth immediately has no patience for her mother... Which I hope doesn't make her look unpleasant. I find it realistic. I know a number of adult women who respond this way to their mothers' well-meaning but nosy questions, and I'm NOT just referring to myself. ;) On the other hand, Beth isn't meant to be 100% in the right here, either.

And our total introduction to Candy! Candy is someone who took me a while to get to know. I had the idea for the scene between Candy and Beth towards the end quite early on, but I didn't really start to understand her as a character for a while. She remained a bit of a villain in my mind for a LONG time, which is pretty much what she is in these early scenes, though you can see a glimmer of sisterly love in there if you squint.

Actually, to be honest, Candy is a little bit based on me. I'm an older, rather than younger, sister, and I have perhaps too strong a dose of "I know best" in me. I kind of put that (on steroids, though) into Candy's personality. She goes way farther than I ever would.

I will be going somewhat more into the elements of Beth's personality that we see here; when she's around non-Webfoot people she so avoids confrontation that the idea of her arguing this much may seem completely alien. I'm going to address that in the rewrites of TWC, but I also address it (in a sort of retcon) in this fic and I hope it makes sense.

Dr. Mortimer is one of those names that I kinda picked out of nowhere because it sounded funny. Who knew I'd be writing it in nearly every chapter for the next three years. :P

I also have no idea if it's illegal or not to make an appointment for someone else to go to therapy. I think there are ethical reasons, the same way you can't have someone committed unless they're a danger to themselves or others, but it might not work that way for therapy - in fact I'm almost sure it doesn't but it made for a good way to show the extent of Irene's pushiness.

Beth not caring for waiting rooms is kind of a callback to "Something In The Air" which at the time was a throwaway gag. Deciding to turn throwaway gags into character points - yay! :P

I'm not sure where Beth's mistrust of therapists comes from, but it's a character trait I came up with in the late 90s. Personally I have high regard for the entire profession of psychology and psychiatry, and I ate up the classes I took. (Yep, armchair therapist right here.)

You can see me kind of scrambling to come up with reasons why Beth wouldn't just go in and say "okay, here's what the problem is" and would instead start talking about her life history. There were two reasons I needed the story to go that way: 1, it was intended to be Beth's life history and this was the format I chose to frame it in, and 2, I was actually just as uncomfortable writing Beth talking about DW and Launchpad as Beth was with doing the actual talking, and I took that as a sign that Beth didn't want to do it and that forcing it would be out of character.

Note the brief description of Beth's job. I have never made it clear what she does, and I thought I'd toss that in there to outline it in slightly more detail. It's still quite vague.

Not everything Beth says here to Dr. Mortimer about being happy is entirely true. You know how when you're depressed it seems like everything has always been, and will always be, as bad as it is right then? That's the problem she's having.

I think I've mentioned this before, but Dr. Mortimer's "therapy" idea of having Beth write down her big regrets so that they can discuss them... that's not really any kind of therapy idea I've heard of, and to be honest, I just picked that so that I had a way to roughly divide up the flashbacks in the fic. I wanted it to go more thematically than chronologically, even though most of the flashbacks are in order anyway, but yeah... that's the reason for the "regrets". I thought it might be useful from a discussion perspective, too.

Three posts in three days?! Has the world gone topsy-turvy??

I KNOW!

Anyway I put together some authors' notes (and babbling and random stuffage) on the prologue of "All About Eve". For those following along at FF.net (which is... everyone I think, right now anyway), the prologue is chapters 1 and 2. I'm not splitting them up here, but they will probably remain separate chapters when I post them on my site, because otherwise it's a terribly long prologue.

Though I am well aware that real prologues don't have two chapters. We'll just... overlook that.

Without further ado, except to mention that I have a sore throat and it is driving me CRAZY!, here are the notes!

Prologue:

References:

- Title: "All About Eve", classic Bette Davis movie; the title really has no relation to the content, it's just straightforward, all about Beth.
- "Back to the Future" - Candy's line about turning in her homework in Beth's handwriting.
- "Signs" - Tank swinging at everything during softball games. I had just rewatched the movie, so I snuck that in there. I did stop short of having Tank quote the film with "It felt wrong not to swing", though.

I have heard of situations where, to start with, an advanced kid was mistaken for a kid with a learning disability. But I think it might've been in "The Simpsons". I'm not sure that really happens but I thought Beth is so quiet that maybe even her parents would overlook the signs of advanced intelligence and focus in on the apparent problems she was having.

Writing Irene's accent is hard and I hate it. HATE HATE HATE it. I love hearing it in my head, but I hate actually writing it out. Incidentally, Irene is based on Pert Kelton's rendition of Mrs. Paroo, the irish mother of Marion from "The Music Man". She was essentially "born" that way, all the way back in '96 (yep and it's taken me this long to put her into a fic), but it was coincidence that I had Gosalyn refer to Beth as "Marion the Librarian", another "Music Man" reference, in my rewrite of TWC1.

Bug's name was going to be Herbert, until I realized that he is the *third* "Herb" in the Webfoot Weavings, after Herb Muddlefoot and Honker (whose real name is Herbert Jr). So I changed it to Henry, though I struggled with it, because I originally named him after my grandfather - first name Herbert, nicknamed "Bud".

Shout-out to referencing my own fanfics! I have a reference to TWC4 in here, which is the first episode that mentions Beth's fondness for tadpoles. This was something I guess I tossed in when I was punching it up back in '95 or so, and I forgot about it until I reread the early ones a few years ago. The "tadpoles" thing stuck with me and so I tossed it in here as a running gag, even though I never meant it to be an actual character point.

It's hard to write Beth being this miserable and this depressed, because gosh, she's like this through almost the *whole fic*. I'm not 100% sure that she's actually bearable in this story because she's just so depressed. It's hard to write, since it feels so repetitive (though it's repetitive for a reason, which I'll go into in a separate note), so I'd understand if it's hard to read.

This scene with Launchpad and Beth is so awkward. Good lord. It's even worse than I remembered. :D I actually really like the part when he tries to talk to her and she pulls her hand away. Oh, Launchpad. Also? Stupid I know, but the whole coffee thing is still cute. I love writing little moments between them, even when nothing at all happens.

I wanted to try to make sure that I got Beth's feelings as accurate as I can, and so here is some TMI. My husband and I were friends before we started dating (though not really close friends like in this situation), and he liked me before I liked him. He and I talked about it, and I said "just friends" and he said he was okay with that - although it only lasted about a week because I decided to give it a go pretty quickly :) - but for a few days things were SUPER-awkward, especially during the second half of the conversation when, it seemed, he just decided now that it was out there he'd go ahead and tell me everything, and I was like "OMG I have to get OUT OF HERE!" So anyway... Beth's discomfort and guilt are based on that, sort of, only magnified.

Sigh. True confessions: I am very, very uncomfortable writing intimate scenes. That goes for romance in particular. I like to write banter and flirtatious dialogue, I like to write introspection, I like to write silly comedy; now, technically, I like to write romance but I am very bad at it. That's why things move very slowly in my fics and that is why things tend to be very understated. There are moments within this Launchpad/Beth scene, when he's trying to talk to her, where I'm attempting to convey an intimacy between them - the kind of thing that, if you were watching it in a movie, would make you ache for the people involved and also be chanting for them to kiss one another. I honestly have no idea if I was successful or if it just falls flat. I for one feel underwhelmed and I would LOVE some feedback. But yeah, there's a big reason why there's not a lot of solid romance in my fics so far... after fifteen stories. *sigh*

On the flip side, the introspective Launchpad stuff I wrote... well I'm rereading it for the first time in like, two years, and I'm surprised to find that I like it. This stuff works for me.

Heh, random reference to "High, Dry, and Flooded" when LP passes the Muddlefoots' house: they're having their Tuo security system removed (and getting the house repaired while they're at it) after the finale of that fic. ^_^ I know I say a few paragraphs later that it's only 8:30 in the morning, which is a pretty early start time for home cleanup, but I wanted to get that gag in (but I cleverly played it down during such a deep emotional scene, becuz clever writer is clever :P)

Five points for the implication that everyone will think LP and Beth's "night together" was less than innocent!

The discussion between LP and Drake is, for once, more or less in-character (as I see it anyway). LP's mood has precedent since he can, on occasion, take things quite hard and get pretty bummed out (and when LP bums out he *really* bums out). DW of course is just being DW. God love 'im. *hugs DW*

For some reason it struck me as immensely funny that Drake woud misquote his "clever quip" from when he beat the Liquidator in the finale of HD&F. Since it's been a while since I read the original fic, though, now I'm like "WHO is going to notice that he misquoted it?" which makes it look like carelessness for anyone who DOES notice. It was on purpose! I'm totally anal about these details and I swear I wouldn't gloss over 'em... even if everyone else in the world does. XD

Hahaha. Drake is *not* a Beth/LP shipper. He's totally not *trying* to be insensitive though - in fact he's trying very hard to be the other thing, you know, UNinsensitive ;P - I've just found that, a lot of times, people just don't seem to get that the moment you've had your heart broken is NOT the right time to say "well now you can get on with your life!" (For the record, I almost certainly would totally say that to someone in these circumstances, because I am just that insensitive! No, but seriously, it's easy to forget how much it hurts when it's not happening to you.)

You can see, in a few moments of this discussion as well as later in the fic, that I was writing this and rewriting TWC1 at the same time, and I was in fact just redoing Beth's and Drake's first meeting and working on how she fell for Drake in the first place. This shows up in LP's reflection that maybe if Beth hadn't met DW at exactly the time she did, she never would've fallen for him... which is probably true. Or maybe not. But I stuck that in because I was in process of giving the newly specific details of their meeting, and it was suddenly relevant. Stuff like that pops up throughout - this fic, and TWC1, were very symbiotic and influenced each other quite a bit. Which is WEIRD, if you think about it. Parasitic. Incestuous, almost. ;P (No, not at all actually, but I was looking for a good word...)

And next we have my introduction of Beth's father and brother! I had never really fleshed them out much in my mind - aside from physical description I knew (and still know) pretty much nothing about the older brother Bill (aka "Beef"), and at the time of writing I didn't know much about Bug yet, either. I've since discovered that Bug is a loving, but mostly uninvolved father. He's just a bit too passive in the family situation and has never tried to take any stand against his very, very outspoken wife.

One quick addition, I had forgotten that I wrote this scene from Honker's perspective. I'm glad I did that even though it seems weird since I think this is basically his only scene in the fic. Still glad though. I love Honker.

There Will Be Information On All About Elizabeth

I am going to post some chapter notes, the way I did with TWC1 and HoAW. And then I'll probably disappear again. :D No, but it will take a little while because I hope to do it as I code the fic for my website - I mentioned before this is an exercise in futility, because I have yet to actually finish designing the place the fics will go onto so they are never going up, but so what? - and that might take a while.

But so what!

Before I do the chapter notes, here's a post that's just about the fic in general, since I'm approaching the ending and all. It's winding down.

Basically, the fanfic ended up being about people. I knew it was character-driven but it was initially going to be about Beth (hence the title, hurr hurr); in the end it became about people, the nature of people, the fact that you never really get the whole picture on anyone and there are very few "villains". Everyone in Beth's past who seems to have wronged her has their own side and their own lives. What they're really guilty of, usually, is thinking of themselves. Which is what Beth is doing, too. So this kind of came out of nowhere, but it became a stronger and stronger theme throughout, as we looked at Beth's family and the people in her past.

The final message becomes that, for all the awful experiences that Beth has been through and all the poor treatment she's had from other people, regardless, she is the one who has created her life by choosing to make the decisions she has. (You can tell I've reached a philosophy of 'owning your own life' over the past few years, huh?) As appropriate, as I go through with the chapter notes, I'll hopefully dedicate a post or two to some of the original characters in this fanfic.

By the way, one character from Beth's past will return! (Or, wait, two - Ariana will, at least I hope - but one other will too! WHICH ONE? I will not tell! Speculate!)

Other themes: I chose "Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" as the theme for Beth's depression. As I view it, she's dwelling on this one moment and experience, unable to let it go, until in the end she realizes life goes on and everything passes. As with many things I've written, this is a realization I've had myself. I like that U2 song a lot, and I love the sort of epiphany at the end of the song. Anyway, this led to the fic being rather repetitive, intentionally so, because despite all of Beth's efforts she couldn't get past the rejection from Drake and the discussion with Launchpad. I *have* found that in depression you can't think of the future, you can only think of where you are right then and feel like it's going to go on forever, so the U2 song is a fantastic representation of that. (It helps that it was written *about* precisely that topic.)

Another theme that came out - I've mentioned this before, but I didn't go into this series thinking of Beth as having trust issues. When the idea occurred to me, I didn't resist it the way that Beth did, but I didn't realize how true it clearly was until I had really thought about it. Once I did, I went "Oh my god, of COURSE she does!" She always has. Weird, huh? I realized I'd never written her as speaking openly about herself, I've left her very private, and very, very unwilling to believe that people like her. I didn't associate that with a trust problem though until I thought about it in those terms. Then I realized it explained a huge amount, including the mystery of why she would remain blind to Launchpad for so long, and why she would *continue* to feel that way.

I think that about covers it, my dears; specifics will show up in each chapter note post.

Oh! Last thing! Beth's parents are both homages to my maternal grandparents, both of whom passed away during the writing of this monster fic. I created both of them way back in 1996, and it took me this long to get them into a fic! Anyway, Bug, Beth's father, was named for my grandfather Bud. His real name was Herbert but he was Bud pretty much his whole life. I changed Bud to Bug first, then had to come up with a reason he'd be called that; this led to his being a camera enthusiast, nicknamed "shutterbug" or "Bug" for short. I did initially name him Herbert, but then realized that made him the third Herbert in the Webfoot Weavings (after Herb Muddlefoot and Honker), so the name was changed. His personality is not largely drawn from my grandfather, who was much more of a character than Bug, but the inspiration was still there. My grandfather died on April 2nd, 2009.

Irene Webfoot was not named after my grandmother (Thelma), nor is my grandmother Irish. But she did call us "me darlin'", and although nothing solidly inspired her character, I think there's a little of my grandmother in there somewhere. I won't say where. Most everything you'd think it was, is not. :) She died April 4th, 2010. I'm not dedicating this fanfic to them, because neither of them even knew it existed, and I'm not sure what either of them would think. But I am using it to remember them, anyway.

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!

Characterization notes

Ugh, I have had writer's block the past couple of weeks. Yeah, I know, *again*. Well, in this case it's one of those things where I am not even thinking about writing as much so I can't pull myself together to DO it when I have the time. I did manage to outline my ideas for the last chapter of act II of TWC1, though.

Since the last stuff I posted (and really, practically the last stuff I worked on) was LP-heavy, this is a good time to ramble about my characterization of LP! (uh-huh, sure.) I've never made it any secret at all that I'm a big fan of LP's. Unfortunately that doesn't mean I'm able to write him or anything. *G* Out of all the characters of this show I think I've always been weakest at writing Launchpad... There are a few reasons for this, I've decided over the past few months.

A big reason is because of the disconnect between "Darkwing" Launchpad and "DuckTales" Launchpad. I mean essentially there really are two Launchpads, with the earlier one being the more active one and the later one being much more reduced in role and scope. LP was always comic relief and always kind of good-naturedly dumb, but he had a much more active role in "DuckTales". DWD's Launchpad is a more passive character, often there primarily to provide a punchline more than play an active role in the crimefighting. They definitely stepped outside of that limitation quite often - not only in eps like "Water Way to Go" when LP gets to be the main hero or stuff like that, but just in general at times LP contributed more. But ultimately the character was not the same as on "DuckTales", he was kind of domesticated.

Don't get me wrong; I don't care at all. :D But it made it harder for me to write him, especially with any real sense of personalitiy. My liking for LP didn't translate into deepening him or revitalizing him as a heroic type or anything, it kind of translated as me thinking he was a great guy and would be a great boyfriend (to be honest: I never wanted him to be MY boyfriend. I have Ryouga for that, thanks) and so I just wrote him as Mr. Great Boyfriend. Which is not really fair to LP because it just, ultimately further reduces him.

I also made the huuuuge, but understandable given the age I was in, mistake of injecting the early stories with a healthy dose of angst. Did I say "healthy"? I'm not sure that's the right word for it. ;D It's excessive. I was young. A lot of the stuff that I was writing about was the sort of thing actually going around in my social circles (at least the self-pity and emo stuff, if not the actual events) but that doesn't make it less annoying to read. *G* Somewhere after "The Bride Wore Black" even I was sick of it and I took a vow: I was not going to write ANY more angst if I could help it. Not unless it actually fit the story and character, in any case! And in the past 11 years I've pretty much stuck by that, good for me. :)

So in revisiting these early stories, I'm trying to stick to that vow again. (as we can see, I apparently have decided it's VERY necessary to the plot in AAE, as it's laid on thick and heavy.) I've wanted for a while to improve on my take on Launchpad - he deserves more than just "Beth's would-be boyfriend". I've never even given a fully satisfactory reason as to why he fell for her in the first place. Not only that, but he's barely even Darkwing's sidekick in these stories, so I want to get him at least back up to THAT status.

Which basically means reinventing how I see him, let alone how I write him. It was about six or so months ago that I started realizing I write him as a very, VERY passive character. I'm infrequently "in his head" and when I am, it's usually in response to something someone else is doing rather than him doing anything. So I gave him more action in "High, Dry, and Flooded" - more sidekick action in particular - which was a good start. This attempt at breaking out of the "passive" role also led to me surprising myself by writing his confession to Beth at the end of that story. In the five ore more years I had been planning that fic, that scene was NEVER in the outline. Then about two weeks before I wrote it, it popped into my head. Surprise! ;D And it was totally right, and I never saw it coming.

It's been similar attempts at getting "into his head" in TWC1, perhaps to varying degrees of success. This is sort of my big chance to not only give him a bit more depth, but to in fact decide just HOW I want to present him in these fics. I can essentially start over. I mean, I know it's not going to be very different from what I've been writing lately, but I can lay down a more concrete base to work with.

I want to give him a few more layers, and as with any other character I really care for (and feel for) that means I want him to have some low points too. I want him to get a little irritated, act a little thoughtlessly, generally be wrong some of the time. I do believe that Launchpad is a sweet guy who couldn't be mean if he were being paid to be so; doesn't mean he can't occasionally say or do the wrong thing without realizing it. I don't know exactly how all this will come out, but we'll see. :)

In terms of character traits... well, for one, I don't tend to go with people who say that they think LP is "smarter than he lets on". I'll agree that he seems a bit dimmer than he did on "DuckTales", but I'd rather just write somewhere in between there than speculate that maybe he plays it dumb to keep DW's ego happy. I don't see any evidence of that, I think they just tweaked the character for a show that was based more in comedy than DT had been. LP is... um... not a thinker. So what? I like 'em big and dumb. (Once again, we have Ryouga for evidence.) ^_~ Nah, but seriously, I tend to like characters the way they are - flaws and all. If a character I like has a negative trait I rarely see it as character assassination, unless I think it's too played up at that character's expense (like Joxer on "Xena: Warrior Princess", don't even get me STARTED).

The brief, cartoony, choppy feel of the early stories allowed for a certain suspension of disbelief as regards LP falling for Beth. We may never know WHY, exactly, but it happened and it's established and we'll just go with that, right? Fine... except that I don't write that way anymore. That's why in the end I need to flesh it out. I need to think of the characters as *characters* instead of shadows, and I need a reason why LP would fall for this girl, a girl who thinks of herself as invisible and does a good job of convincing the rest of the world of it, too. I've no doubt that he'd be friendly with her, start up a conversation, find her pleasant enough, but fall in love? Why?

I've got reasons, finally. I hope I'll eventually get to them. For now I'll say, in the course of TWC1, you may be wondering if he's actually falling for her yet. Nope. Not within this story. There may be a little more than he's letting on to himself... maybe... but right now they're both just forging a tenuous friendship. Look for developments in fics to come, however.... IF I ever manage to write 'em. :P

The Perils of Ficcing

*lays head on desk and sighs*

Well, first of all I just posted another chapter on FF.net of All About Elizabeth, which is y'know. Fun on wheels. ;) No, I like it, actually. Present-day stuff (if you consider 1993 to be "present day" which for the sake of this fanfic we shall), and I get to introduce Beth's younger brother, whom I still know next to nothing about. I don't know yet if he wears glasses or not (Candy does - or rather, she needs them, but she has contacts; Beef doesn't need 'em) but I *think* his hair is slightly too long. I am pretty sure it's brown.

Eventually I'll work Kit, the youngest, in there too. I mean if I didn't it would just be danged lazy, you know? ;P

However, I have the spare time to write tonight and I've been in a real writing "groove" lately but what happens all too often is that I spend my days thinking of what I will write next, then I sit down to do it when I have a free evening and all my drive goes *poof!* out the window. Or um... out something that would make a "poof!" noise. (Baby powder bottle?) The problem I run into is that I don't want to write any of the scenes I am currently at in my fics. I only have two that I'm working on right now - AAE, and the rewrite of TWC1 - and I don't feel too much like doing TWC1 just yet but I am getting annoyed with Beth's therapist and don't feel like writing him. Nor do I feel like doing a flashback. This is all a little maddening since, with a handful of exceptions, that is all this fic is about, so I'm kind of stuck.

That's the problem I run into now. For years and years I've been teasing myself with the romance stuff - I don't write it all that well, so I try to limit myself with it and mostly just write the sort of tension of it. But I really want to write it for real, and sometimes it reaches the point where everything else is just the stuff I have to get through before I can write a good romantic and/or romantic tension scene; I have destroyed myself a little, I think. *sigh*

(Can you believe I've been drawing this relationship out for 14 years now? What the heck is wrong with me? :P)

Does this happen to anyone else? Do you ever get writer's block specifically because you want so much to write a particular thing, and get bored with/don't feel like doing the in-betweens? Fortunately sometimes it does pass and I can get good blocks of actual STORY done; sometimes however, it gets really bad - and this is the worst - it gets so bad that I can't actually even skip ahead and write a scene I've been wanting to do, because it doesn't come out right, so instead I sit and stare at it with even more self-induced block. AARGH. This is why I was not cut out for this.

I'm serious about that question, though. I'd like answers if anyone has any to give; discussion is totally cool by me. I believe I have it set so that you can post here without having a blogger account - if not, leave a message on LJ and I'll see if I can change my settings.

Aaaaand this? This right here? Is called procrastinating. :P Give me strength, folks. Deep down I would like to maybe get some part of a chapter done on TWC1 or something, tonight; I'd settle for making it through the first section of a flashback if I can't do TWC1. But c'mon. SOMETHING.

All About Elizabeth, act II chapter IV

Why do I do "Acts", you may wonder? This isn't actually what I was intending to write a post about but as I wrote the subject line I kind of thought that. It goes back to when I first started writing DWD fanfic and instead of writing in chapters I wrote in three acts. This was because I thought of the fics in terms of "scripts" (even though they weren't in script format) and I was trying to have good commercial break space. XD So all my first fics have three acts, and I used to get very frustrated when I had to break from that format. Then my fics just started getting longer and longer and I realized it was time to loosen up somewhat. (It's important to remember that I was fifteen when I started writing these fics; it explains a little bit more about my Idiot mindset. ^_~)

Anyway, I do like the idea of "acts" and though I do tend to separate them into chapters I still think of the acts themselves as having some kind of either unifying theme or unifying timeline. I also like to have as close as possible to an equal number of chapters in each act - HDF had 4 chapters per act and initially AAE was going to have either 2 or 3 chapters per act, but it's been growin' lately. Later maybe I'll write a post about longer fics and how I don't like them (er, writing them - love reading them, don't be fooled ^_~), it's rather confusing even for me.

ANYway. First of all this post was supposed to let anyone reading know that I've posted chapter 6 of All About Elizabeth on ff.net, which closes out Act II. This fic is pretty explicit about the themes in each act but Act II was Beth's early years at school. It's the "School" Act because it focuses specifically on her time there; it's not the only section that will deal with her childhood, nor is it the only section that will deal with her school life, which I know seems counterproductive but in this case the Act was about her school life, rather than just making use of it.

...Yeah.

So! The experiences Beth goes through in school. If you haven't read the chapter yet you might want to before you read the rest of this post. *G* As I was writing it I kind of wondered if I was being accurate. I, like a LOT of kids, did not have a great time in school (particularly elementary school which is what this time period covers); I was not one of the popular ones and was alternately ignored and/or made fun of. However I didn't really ever have an experience like Beth did... I never had a friend turn on me that way and I was never exactly a "group" target. So as I wrote the whole thing I tried for realism but worried constantly that I was overdoing it.

It was, and is, important to me not to give the impression that Beth has it worse than anyone else. Part of why Beth's shrink talks about Nicola being unhappy in the final part of the fic is because - well, first of all I think Beth needs to have that pointed out to her (even though she STILL doesn't get it), but also because I wanted to reinforce the fact that Nicola was not really *just* a jerk, not just a girl who turned mean for no reason. Similarly I think most kids who appear to be jerks are like that, because ANY kid can be mean. My daughter, sweetest kid you will ever meet if she's in the mood, is now two and she's at that stage where she'll just walk up and hit another kid, especially if he's smaller than she is. They're all like that at her daycare. It's weird to watch. XD Then they're like "whaaat? I didn't want to HURT him, I just wanted to kick him hard and see what he did!" 9_9 Point being: kids are just selfish, contrary, and on occasion mean-spirited little beings, even the good ones. Even Beth, who can be goaded into betraying a confidence and saying the most hurtful thing possible. If I had written this chapter from Nicola's POV we'd have had a very different story.

Well, there's me preaching. ^_~ I will say that I've had some very good feedback from a couple of people regarding Beth's experiences being something they can relate to, so I feel rather good about this section. I never want this story to be a "poor BETH, look what she's going through!" story even though I think it'll come across that way by necessity... growing up is HARD but this is an exploration of what has made Beth who she is now, not an excuse to look back at how hard she's had it. Everyone has had it hard. It's hard to get that across in a fic written almost exclusively from one POV, but I'm trying. :)

See the latest chapter here.