sleeplesspotato

I wasn't completely offline this past month, but I kind of subconsciously disengaged; I'm not sure why, exactly. Maybe I was just tired from constantly logging into NaNo and other sites to post updates and catch up with forum threads. Now that Camp NaNo is coming up again, I feel like I'm going to go back to that old daily rhythm, but I'm not sure yet.

I've been trying to plan the original thing I wanted to write for Camp NaNo all month, and it's been all over the place -- I rewrote my main character thrice and one major supporting character twice, and I still feel like I haven't quite gotten the right feel for either of them. It was like I had a character who had wandered in from an entirely different story; I can probably write that story someday, but it's not what I want to work on right now. I guess this comes of having the setting coalesce first before the characters: I keep thinking that I need a specific type of main character who can thrive in it, otherwise it doesn't seem to work.

Recently I started trying to follow the 7-point story structure exercises, which has you start at the ending, then you figure out a beginning that contrasts with that ending, then you jump back and forth between different plot points until you have something that hangs together. It seems to work well for me since I also think non-linearly. I'm not sure if I can finish this planning in time for Camp NaNo, though a nice side effect of learning this way of structuring plots is that I'm excited to get back to the Castlevania OT3 fic; it's like I found something that will help me figure out how to make all the subplots that I came up in April and May hang together (or not -- I probably have to prune them), and I'm actually looking forward to the revision and draft 2. (Or maybe I've just gotten enough distance from it that I want to work on it again after getting so tired of it.) I might decide at the last minute what I'll work on during Camp NaNo, but either way I'm grateful to have enough ideas to work with and the opportunity to work on them.

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As for my plants, only the ginger has survived since my last post; the mold hasn't come back, thank goodness, even if it's been raining off and on for the past few weeks. Last week I started regrowing leftover green onions in tiny jars on the kitchen windowsill; they've grown really well -- the tallest ones are more than 8 inches tall -- and I'm starting to wonder if I should move them to a pot. The last batch of green onions in pots didn't do so well, though, so I'm still hesitating.

It's almost midway through May, and I'm getting close to half of this month's 15k word count goal; I'm maybe a bit less productive, though my NaNo stats page tells me I've gotten faster (from 8 to 16 words per minute). I'll probably go a bit over 15k again this month. ^^ My main concern is that I've come up with a bunch of subplots for the Castlevania OT3 fanfic and they're all a mess right now; I'm planning to follow the advice to take a break after finishing the draft before going over it during revision so I can look at it with relatively fresh eyes. I get the feeling that the revised version will be longer because of the restructuring, which will probably mean adding new scenes to bridge the gaps. It's going to be a lot of work, I think.

I tried looking for new groups to join in the NaNo forums, and so far I haven't had much luck; the ones I joined during and after Camp have gone inactive, and I haven't found another one that fits. I did find a writing buddy of sorts, though right now she's busy with other things and we don't talk as often. It's kinda lonely. ^^;; I guess I'll keep looking, though it helps that I'm not as dependent on the external motivation as I was during Camp last month. Maybe the writing habit is finally taking hold.

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The weather has been hot recently, and it seems like the plants haven't reacted well; the leek, dill, and kale seem to be wilting. :( The ginger finally grew some leaves a few weeks ago, which was a welcome surprise -- it took almost a month, and I wasn't sure it was growing at all. Its first leaf yellowed pretty badly at the tip, so I moved the pot to a shadier spot where it seems to be doing better. It has since put up other leaves and seems to be fairly healthy. I hope that means I'm doing something right. ^^;;

The dill pot has become home to a thriving community of tiny pale insects; I'd read that dill attracts different kinds of insects, so I left them alone, though I wonder what they are. They haven't migrated to the other pots yet, and I'm hoping they don't.

The last weekend was exhausting, and I've been lagging behind a bit in Camp NaNo. OTL I suppose it was a good idea to set a low word count so it's not that hard to catch up.

Castlevania OT3. I'm mostly(?) done with chapter 2, which seems to be somewhat wonkier than chapter 1; I have this habit of setting up all sorts of things in the beginning then figuring out what to do with them as I go along, which can lead to inconsistencies. Even when I have an outline or scene notes, I keep pulling things out of thin air and tossing them into the chapter almost subconsciously. (In particular, the castle is getting a bit overpowered; I might have to dial back the things it can do.) I'm glad that the 21 Days to a Novel exercises have helped me to stay on track, though I think I've already veered off-course somewhat.

Chapter 3's opening scene has already played out in my head; I might wind up finishing it before I finish the final scene of chapter 2, which is probably okay since I still have to bridge them. I probably need to do some streamlining in chapter 2 since I keep forgetting that the reader doesn't know what I already know about the characters' motivations. ^^;; If this keeps up, the word count for chapter 2 might be padded a bit, and I might get to around halfway of chapter 3 by the end of the month.

More delays: my computer's file system got messed up last week and I had to both get that fixed and offset my work hours. It seems unlikely for me to finish 21 Days to a Novel this week, but I'll keep trying just the same.

Castlevania OT3. I've been going back-and-forth on my version of Speaker culture since there's very little to go on in the anime; I'm still figuring out how a caravan of nomadic scholars can make a living (the answer seems to be that only a handful of them are scholars while the rest are engaged in herding livestock and other pastoralist activities). There's also the problem of Sypha's magic -- it's in her bloodline in the games, yet her grandfather is implied not to have any magic in the brief scenes in which he appears in the anime. I've assumed that it skips generations and that Sypha isn't the only mage in her clan, though it seems that magic is relatively rare among her people (only Sypha is shown to have magic among the group of Speakers in season 1). I've had more to think about and it's reshaping how I see Sypha and her role in the story.

One thing I've noticed is how Sypha's background (as I'm coming to know it) makes her the protagonist of a different story -- a coming-of-age one wherein she goes out into the world and finds herself, so to speak. It seems like a tangent compared to Trevor and Alucard's intertwined fates; in weaving her story into theirs I keep thinking about how she's primarily a support character in the games, the mage who turns out to be a woman when you get to know her (IIRC this was in her first appearance) and settles down with the hero after the game ends. If I'm not careful I could wind up relegating her to a similar role -- a way to prop up Trevor and Alucard's stories and give them descendants for possible sequels*.

I'm hoping I can make her character arc compelling yet still cohesive with Trevor and Alucard's arcs.

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* Sypha's magic combining with the Belmont bloodline eventually leads to Richter's OP-ness several generations later; his Hydro Storm attacks are ridiculous, especially in Symphony of the Night once he's been unlocked.

Another delayed post for last week. ^^;; I'm hoping the rest of my writing schedule won't be as delayed.

Castlevania OT3. I've gotten to the meaty part of 21 Days to a Novel: figuring out character arcs and how to arrange the plot events. This is when I realize (again, since I've been using these for a while) that the exercises live up to their name -- I have 3 main characters with somewhat separate arcs that each have to come to a satisfying conclusion, and that takes more chapters than I thought I'd need initially. In writing my way through these exercises I've come to a better understanding of the story I want to tell; my main concern is that Sypha's arc seems to be largely in support of Trevor's and Alucard's, and I'm a bit unhappy about that. (She's awesome and deserves to be the heroine of her own story, dammit.) I also realized that the anime quickly introduces Sypha as a Speaker mage at the beginning of season 1 then kind of forgets about her background up until around halfway through season 4, and I found myself asking things like, What's the culture of her people? What's it like living as an itinerant mage and scholar, helping the communities you encounter without expecting anything in return? In fleshing out Sypha's character I've had to answer these questions for myself; her character in the games is rather different as far as I can tell, so I stuck to what was in the anime and extrapolated from there.

I hope I can finish this in around 50k words* or less; I'll try to trim out any unnecessary bits during revisions. (So far, one biggish subplot has sprung out of Trevor's and Alucard's story arcs and will likely intertwine with Sypha's. It seems like I have to keep it for now.)

* 21 Days to a Novel assumes that the novel resulting from the exercises will be around 80k-100k words. I can't see myself writing that many words, but I suppose I'll find out eventually.

There's going to be a spin-off of the Castlevania anime featuring Richter Belmont and Maria Renard from Rondo of Blood; they'll likely meet up with Alucard, which means the spin-off will also cover Symphony of the Night. This is good news -- if there's going to be a continuation, then Symphony of the Night is definitely one of the top picks for adaptation -- though I'm a little sad about my Castlevania OT3 changing. (It's understandable, since Richter's period is a few hundred years after Trevor and Sypha's.) I'd also be a bit unhappy if the spin-off follows Alucard's fate in Symphony of the Night...he deserves better than that. :(

BTW Warren Ellis won't be writing for the spin-off following allegations of abuse. I'm not really a fan, so this doesn't affect me as much as it has other people who were deeply influenced by him, but I am disappointed in him -- I expected more from the writer behind Transmetropolitan's incisive social commentary. *sigh* Fwiw he completed all four seasons of Castlevania; maybe it makes sense for a different writer to take on the spin-off. I'll just have to wait and see.

I started the trial period for a new job this week; I'm lucky to be able to work remotely, though it still feels weird to be monitored remotely by an app that takes screenshots of my screen every 10 minutes. Doing my work inside a virtual machine mitigates that somewhat by isolating my work environment (as long as I avoid doing anything non-work related inside the VM while the monitoring app is running). Fwiw the timer definitely motivates me to stay focused on what I'm doing. ^^;;

Maybe it's a good thing that I'm mostly in the planning stage for my current WIPs; I'm not sure yet how to schedule writing time, since work stuff tends to take over my brain. (I suppose this is the downside of being fond of puzzles -- work problems appear like puzzles to my brain, which continuously tries to solve them even when I'm not consciously thinking about them.) This might be a good time to zero in on the aspects of the characters and their settings that I like best; that might help me stay motivated, especially when work gets stressful. In the past I would write silly wish-fulfillment fluff as an escape from dreary jobs; my WIPs are a bit more serious now, though I can probably inject some fluff into them.

Random OT3 thought: I'd been thinking about how Alucard has these strong forever-alone vibes, then I realized that Somebody to Love by Queen fits him quite well. In hindsight, the Mills & Boon/Harlequin synopsis I'd chosen for my Castlevania OT3 is basically that song -- except that Alucard hasn't realized yet that he's looking for that special someone. Or someones, in this case. Guess I know what I'll be playing on loop when I get back to planning and writing.

Omegaverse Levi x f!Eren. Still fleshing out the characters using the 21 Days to a Novel exercises. I'd chosen Hange Zoë as my third viewpoint character, then found out a number of details about them that I hadn't known previously (for instance, that Hange's gender is left to the reader's interpretation); this made me go over the things I'd written so far and revise them a bit. In general, though, I had to rethink Hange's character since this is a modern AU without titans, and Hange is nothing if not obsessed with titans (at least, as far as I've watched, which is up to about the first episode or two of season 4). I'd also noticed that I kept defining Hange's character in relation to Levi's, since the two of them have a strong bond and I considered Levi my main character; it seemed unfair to Hange when they're supposed to be on equal footing with Levi and f!Eren (currently named Elena). Anyway, this all led to some changes that required a bit of retconning, and I'm not done with that yet.

The fake science behind the Omegaverse. I fell into an AO3 rabbit hole containing essays (multi-chapter essays with diagrams and charts, even) about how to make the Omegaverse tropes even vaguely plausible; I'll probably write a separate post with all the links I found. Since I'm going to do some worldbuilding for Omegaverse Levi x f!Eren, it seemed fitting to check out the variations that other people had come up with. I also started wondering if I could truly say my story is an Omegaverse one because I'm not going to include mpreg or give my female alpha (ie, Elena) a dick; I'm planning to use some of the familiar tropes (scenting, permanent bonds, betas are the majority, and of course heats), but that's probably it. I suppose this might be for the better -- Elena's going to be a medical researcher and Hange is already a medical researcher, and that means I need to be more rigorous with my fake science. That also means that it's going to take me a while to finish all of this prep work...too late to regret it, I guess.

Unconventional Courtship and my Castlevania OT3. I apparently thought that I didn't have enough WIPs, since I signed up for Unconventional Courtship 2021 after checking some of the suggested plot summaries. I quickly realized that my Castlevania OT3 (Alucard, Trevor, and Sypha) would be a good fit for one of the summaries, which features a castle and a brooding male lead; I asked if OT3s are okay and the mod said yes, so I went for it. I now have until 30 Jun to finish the first 1000 words; not that hard for the beginning, since I have a clear idea of how this will start, but I'm still hazy on how it will go from Alucard being a brooding idiot and Trevor and Sypha being their chaotic selves to the happily ever after (kinda) that I want for them. Fwiw the Castlevania anime is anything but happy, so I'm highly motivated to write the love story that I didn't get. I also want to stay true to Castlevania's vibes, though, so this will probably need some action scenes, gore, and witty banter alongside the romance tropes. I can manage the action scenes, and maybe some gore, but idk if I can do the witty banter. ^^;; Oh well. I'll see how it turns out.