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.

It is 60 minutes after I intended to go to bed

I may keel over.

I'm jus tgoing to jump into chapter notes on TWC4. I know this is jarring b/c I haven't done any notes on Chapters 1 or 2 but... I'll get to those later. :)

References:

- The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly
- Also "Buddy Holly" by Weezer - I couldn't resist on that one.
- DWD episode "Twin Beaks"


- Okay, Chapter 3 and we FINALLY get a reference to the earthquake plot being more than just a backdrop for the fic :P And it will take even longer to see that pan out... think "next act"...

- I think this might possibly be the earliest (chronological) reference to the fact that Beth used to live in Duckburg. I'm pretty sure I hadn't mentioned this in the earlier fics anywhere.

- You know, Beth's thought that maybe she won't be seen by "too many people who matter" when she finds that Launchpad is the one who answers the door is just.. mean. She doesnt' realize it's mean but it's mean. :(

- This scene was really hard to write. I'm not sure why... well for one it went on a little too long and I couldn't cut things without making it disjointed so I kept having to just trash it and rewrite it, pushing a bit harder in a particular direction. But also, getting the right tone was SUPER tricky. You know - just making sure that it didn't come across as mean, and that there was a reason that he'd think she was fine with the conversation. The reason is because she dislikes confrontation and she's telling herself to lighten up, so she makes herself go along with it but the minute he starts implying that she might not be UNattractive she can't take it since she takes it to mean the reverse.

- Right after the Launchpad scene I had a scene with Beth speaking to Binkie and being kind of fascinated with her... from the perspective of, like, "I didn't think that mothers like her still existed today!" I kept it and I'll put it up here maybe tomorrow, I think ther'es nothing wrong with it, but it was not essential to the plot at all. Just cut for length. At this point in the fic, they have met before (the previous night in fact), but Beth just can't figure out how to respond to Binkie.

- The original version of the fic had Launchpad driving Beth and Gos to the mall, but not staying with them. He did it just because he was sweet on Beth so you could say pretty much anything like "Beth needs a drink of water" and he'd go get it. Or "Beth needs an entire new wardrobe" and he'd be like "What colour?" Which is a terrible idea, to let LP pick out your clothes. But I digress. Another difference is that instead of Honker going with them, Binkie accompanied them. I DO NOT KNOW WHY NOW. I thought about leaving that in but couldn't find any possible reason it would make sense. Instead it made more sense to have Honker along and let Beth hang out with two children vastly younger than her. :)

- So. I have to say. The stuff with Gosalyn all leaves me incredibly pleased with myself. I wish I'd heard from people who liked it but ... at least I've not heard from anyone saying they DON'T like it. Silver lining! :D Seriously though, I just had so much fun writing her and I think it's not only fun to read, I think it's in-character. I sure hope so anyway. I find GOs can be tricky to write.

- I don't think it's abnormal to have an eye exam/glasses store inside a mall. If it seems abnormal, please know that when we were in college my husband used to go to a dentist whose office was in the mall. So maybe it's just that kind of mall. Incidentally note how this puts a timestamp on the fic: there's a Halloween store mentioned, to remind you that it's October. :)

- The idea that Beth could just get not only frames and new lenses but also contact lenses, in approximately an hour, is silly. At least I think it is. I know it was when I first wrote it back in the mid-'90s... I assume it still is. But let's just go with it. It is not the only thing I will be asking you to suspend disbelief on during this fic. XD

- I discovered while RPing Beth that she doesn't let people move her outside of her comfort zone. I can't force her to do anything interesting because when I'm in her headspace she argues politely but ferociously. She nearly always wins. So it seemed logical to work that into the fic and have Gos get frustrated. Beth seems like a pushover but that's only when it's for someone else's benefit. If it's for hers she won't do it and you can't make her.

- Also I really need to write Honker more often. (I said that just the other day when I posted the preview for this chapter, I know.) He's just very... quiet. But I like having him around, and before the rewrites he didn't appear in the series until TWC5. Even if he's only been in it a little, at least he's been *present* since TWC3. Meanwhile, within this fic, I really liked having him and Beth jibe a bit on their opinions. They get along really well since in a lot of ways they're kind of um... the same character. ^^;

- Throwing in a reference to Honker's Aunt Trudy from Twin Beaks just happened but it felt natural. I like it. :)

- I think I've said this before, but I'll specify it again: Beth is actually a very good seamstress, but you can't tell it from looking at her clothes because she doesn't make them to fit her properly. She makes all her shirts at least one size too big, for reasons unknown. I don't show that properly in my pics of her. :P But it's true!

- Favourite line in this one is Gosalyn's dismissal of the candy store comparison.

30 Days Meme day 13

Time to start getting back to this...

Day 13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

I prefer canon. When I wrote Xena fanfic I used to incorporate a bit of fanon sometimes, but a lot of times it would end up being contradicted, and once it was I would inevitably go with the canon. One of the main ones I remember was where Joxer was born, and since it hadn't been stated, it became fanon that he came from a particular place - Corinth, I think it was? Then the series actually gave a place, in season five, and people were perplexed. "WAIT Athens? I thought he was from Corinth!" That irritated me since it was pure fanon that had spread. It's silly to get annoyed by this simple mistake, but I was anyway. ^^;

I don't get annoyed by fanon as much anymore but I do get annoyed when people believe that it's canon, and correct me for it. Like someone who told me that it was canon that Quackerjack's real name was "Jack Quackers" or something like that. No, in canon, he does not HAVE a real name. You can't control what fanon people believe comes from the show, though - they're like memes, they just spread and no one knows where they came from - so I just have to shrug it off. (I hate being corrected wrongly though, lol.)

Uhhh, this kind of doesn't really answer the question, does it... it's more of a ramble... Okay, back to the real question.

Do I prefer fanon or canon? I prefer canon. In fact, with the fics I write now, I stick to canon as close as I possibly can; if there aren't details given sometimes I'll make some up but more often I won't directly address it. Like, I don't believe DW has any siblings and I don't think his parents are around, but I don't necessarily think they're dead either. I'm never going to state one way or the other in my fics. On the other hand, I think it's fanon that Launchpad has a good relationship with his sister Loopy; in DuckTales they barely interacted. But I WANT them to be close so I came up with an explanation that they rarely see each other but they write letters *constantly*. So I'm not a nazi about it canon-only. ;)

As to whether writing fanfic for a series has changed how I see the source material? Not... really... I mean, usually I only write fic for a series if I've already examined it heavily, which is something I do with series that I like. I like to go into things knowing what I'm trying to examine. I have had opinions of the source material change but I think that has more to do with my aging and viewing it differently than with it being a result of writing for it. I honestly don't think writing for a series, and whether I use fanon or canon, has ever changed my opinion on the series.

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 3

Day 3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

Wow, three days in a row, how bout dat.

Well, let's see if I can knock this one out quickly:

Ranma 1/2: Ryouga. Even though I don't write him IC in my spinoff (which is the only "writing" I've done).
Xena: Warrior Princess: Joxer, and Aphrodite. Yeah I was and am a Joxer fan. The show was actually very, very frustrating because every time they'd start to give some development to Joxer they'd take it back later and sometimes make him even more 1-dimensional. :P Aphrodite though, she was just fun. :)

Most of the fandoms I did drabbles for that I mentioned yesterday, well, I've written so little (and mainly on-demand) that I don't have a favourite. No fave for Fruits Basket or FMA, or Buffy or Princess Tutu. I liked writing Utena in the "Revolutionary Girl Utena" fic I did and I loved writing Sesshomaru in the second (unarchived) Inuyasha drabble. But that was really just a joke fic. :D I also don't have a favourite in Tiny Toons.

I do have a favourite in the Real Ghostbusters, and that's Peter Venkman, even though I wrote him terribly. He was SO MUCH FUN. I wanted to write the fic b/c I wanted to write for Janine, and she was fun to write for, but Peter was the runaway star once I started. Not of the fic, just of every scene he was in, the egotistical scene-grabber. :D

You'll notice perhaps that I left DWD for last; that's cause it's the longest answer. :D I think at this point I've finally become comfortable with writing Launchpad, so in terms of good guys, he's probably my favourite to write. I actually get really nervous writing Drake since I'm not often very good at keeping him IC; I *love* writing Darkwing when he's being melodramatic during an action scene, but I don't have a lot of action scenes, so other than that, I find him challenging. LP has gotten somewhat easier for me since I decided to go ahead and develop his inner monologue somewhat. I think he's still more or less in character but I love writing him being just... kind of easily confused, kind of dim but really well-meaning and trying to keep up. :D

In terms of villains, thus far I'd have to say Megavolt. He's so random, it's easier for me to write his craziness than it was with Quackerjack. I really enjoyed it. I hear Megs's voice in my head more easily than I do with Quacky, too. :)

So there's your answer, fishbulb!

30 Days Meme day 2

Well, two days in a row! That's promising. Or well, actually meaningless. XD

Day 2 – Name the fandoms you’ve written in, and how much you’ve written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.


Well, let's see. If we don't count the X-Men, which never officially had anything written for it, then:

Darkwing Duck
Ranma 1/2 **
Xena: Warrior Princess

And other than these, a few drabbles in "Fullmetal Alchemist", "Inuyasha", "Fruits Basket", "Revolutionary Girl Utena" and "Princess Tutu". Oh hell, I keep forgetting, I've done three drabbles for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" too.

I think that's it... oh, no, untrue. I've also written, very early on, for "The Real Ghostbusters" (one terrible, terrible fic that I think is lost to Geocities) and "Tiny Toon Adventures". Geez, I have a much longer list than I thought.

The two biggest ones are absolutely "Darkwing Duck" which obviously I still write for, and "Xena: Warrior Princess" which I guess I don't. I haven't written for it in a long time, anyway. I haven't officially quit it or anything, in fact I've always kind of wanted to go back to it, but the more time passes the less likely that is to happen. My interest in that series is in the toilet, and even though I like the sort of kind of AU I ended up writing in, I've been out of it so long that I dont' have a handle on how I wrote the characters anymore, and I wouldn't have a readership. no biggie, I'm not missing anything for writing them.

The others were mainly one-shots, I think they fall as follows:

FMA: 2 drabbles, only one posted on FF.net. (The one that wasn't posted was better but I can't find it now.)
Inuyasha: 2 drabbles, only one posted, the unposted was better.
Fruits Basket: 2 drabbles, both surprisingly popular, including the one I don't like and only wrote because a friend challenged me to do it :D
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 3 drabbles, only one on FF.net, another one is exactly 100 words and can be found via Google if I look hard enough. The third was only read by one person and was crappy.
Utena: One-shot drabble about Anthy giving Utena chocolate on Valentine's Day. Still totally popular which makes me happy :D
Tutu: One-shot drabble about Ahiru and Fakir living as man and duck, I guess. Also still popular, also makes me happy; I thought it was a pretty good fic.

RGB: Pretty awful semi-Mary Sue fic, though I swear at the time I thought I was only making up OCs in order to be able to center a fic around Janine, which was my real intent. Looking back that might've been the excuse, but it didn't hinge that way. sigh.
TTA: I wrote one stand-alone fic by myself about, of all things, Elmyra and Montana Max, and then I co-wrote two group fics. My contributions were tiny but I'm still credited on both. :D

I am not active in ANY of those fandoms now, but then again, I was never technically "active" in any of them. I just wrote the drabbles because I was challenged to while bored. :) I'd like to go back to RGB actually, if I had any ideas, which I do not.



** Ranma 1/2 was the next fandom I was interested in after DWD, and I read a ton of fanfic for it, but I never officially wrote for it. I did, however, create a sort of spinoff/parody universe based around Ryouga and me; initially based off of RPs that had Ryouga tossed in because I love him, and then the persona developed. It's never actually been fully written out and never will because it's shamelessly self-insert/wish fulfillment, but I have written out one and a half "episode" scripts and have a full "series" plotted in my head, and I stay with it because I honestly feel it's intelligent and funny, and a bit ironic. But it's absolutely 100% Mary Sue at the same time. :D Anyway, I've not only written out those scripts, I've also written two drabble-esque fanfics for it and half of a longer fanfic, and a friend of mine has also written fic for it. So it exists and people have seen it, thus I include it here. Sort of.

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!

30 Days of Rain

No not really. Was thinking of "28 Days of rain, flash floods in February" - that's the opening line from a Tears for Fears song. I needed something that goes with 30 days, which is how many days this meme goes on for. What meme you ask?

The fic one that I was inspired to do by Cheezey. The one that has these questions:

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?

Day 2 – Name the fandoms you’ve written in, and how much you’ve written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.

Day 3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

Day 4 – Do you have a “muse” character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the story isn’t about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?

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?

Day 6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?

Day 7 – Have you ever had a story change your opinion of a character?

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.

Day 9 – Pairings – For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to write?

Day 10 – Pairings – Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and written a pairing you liked, but found you couldn’t write, or a pairing you didn’t like, and found you could?

Day 11 – Genre – do you prefer certain genres of fic when you’re writing? What kind do you tend to write most?

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

Day 13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

Day 14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you’re comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you’re writing is G-rated instead?

Day 15 – Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what’s the strangest thing you’ve warned for in a story?

Day 16 – Summaries – Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?

Day 17 – Titles – Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the story? Also, if you do chaptered story, do you give each chapter a title, or not?

Day 18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your stories (aka “bunnies”) from?

Day 19 – When you have bunnies ideas, do you sit down and start writing right away, or do you write down the idea for further use?

Day 20 – Do you ever get bunnied inspired from other people’s stories or art in the same fandom?

Day 21 – Sequels – Have you ever written a sequel to a story you wrote, and if so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?

Day 22 – Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you’ve thought about doing? And if not, why not?

Day 23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?

Day 24 – Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren’t any major flaws in your story? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?

Day 25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain “mood” to write your story? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?

Day 26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you’ve had to research for a story?

Day 27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?

Day 28 – Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether writing together, or having an artist work on a piece about your story?

Day 29 – What is your current project or projects?

Day 30 – Do you have a favorite story you’ve written? What makes it your favorite?

We'll see how long I can go... :D