All Eyes on Me

Last night I caught my stat counter when it reached 100,000 hits, which is a pretty exciting milestone. It's not anything crazy; as you can see I've had a profile on AO3 since near the beginning of the site, and I've got things posted that I wrote back in the early 2000's, so it's taken me quite a long time to get to this point. But I've written some good stuff, stories I'm very proud of. And honestly nearly half of those hits are on one piece, which far and away is the most popular thing I've ever written. I try not to base my esteem on my own work by how many people read it, but looking at this makes me feel good. I'm glad there are those out there who have enjoyed reading my stories.

Today’s scene is a Text from Avengers Tower that was inspired by the meme below. It’s another one where a small feature of a character interaction is turned into a little observational joke. It’s dumb, but made me laugh. THAT’S ENOUGH FOR ME.



( Day #16 - First Impression )

This is an idea that was knocking around my head for Little Monsters for a while now, but I didn’t want to post it until I worked out something along the lines of #10 - Houses and Humans. It could be really funny if I figure out “epic adventure game” versions of normal human everyday activities to turn into sessions of their game. This bit needs polishing, but I actually think it came out pretty funny.



( Day #14 - Special Ability )

I am looking forward to interactions between Mary and Beatrice in Mrs. Hawking part 8. There’s a lot of material in the idea that Mary used to be Mrs. Hawking’s apprentice, and Beatrice’s interest in moving into that role. Mary can be a mentor as well, and her ambivalence about what it means to learn from and work with Mrs. Hawking adds some interesting tension. What would she say to another bright young girl who seems to be on the verge on her life moving in the same direction as Mary’s, with all the good and the bad that implies? With the added complication of the class differences, which can never be ignored in this story.

This scene piece uses the word “scrub” too much, but I like it and all its connotations. I feel like you hear the hard work baked right into it in a way that “clean” or “wash” doesn’t necessarily. That vibe is very necessary to this moment.


Photos by Jacob LaRocca

( Day #12 - Scrubbing )

Okay, this is an idea I really like. Monster High released a doll of Twyla where she’s the DM for a roleplaying game with the accompanying dice and minifigures, and it made me think it would be really fun to write Little Monsters skits where they play their equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons. But since they’re monsters, they play as boring humans doing weird versions of human shit. Hilarious!

This bit is pretty random and thrown together, but I like the gag. It also occurred to me that I could buy, like, regular-looking Barbie dolls and stage their interactions to represent the in-game events, cutting between them and the “real” monster world. OH JOY MORE DOLLS TO BUY AND STORE. But it could be cool.



( Day #10 - Houses and Humans )

Okay, this is pretty bare bones, but there’s a germ of a good idea in here. In Hawking 8, Nathaniel and Clara’s daughter Beatrice’s involvement in Mrs. Hawking’s work is going to be further explored. I like the idea of looking into what her integration into the team looks like, and how that affects Mrs. Hawking and Mary dealing with one another again after their four-year separation. It will also add a lot of grist to Clara’s story, as she navigates her feelings about Beatrice’s path.

This will need a lot of refining and expansion. I still don’t know the details of the case or how it will work. But there’s something I can work with banged out here.


Photo by Mark Edwards

( Day #8 - Hall Girl )

Another sitcommy bit for Dream Machine. Not sure where this would be used, but I know I want an element to be Ryan repairing his relationship with his adult kids. I thought it would be particularly interesting if his daughter Meryl, from whom he was completely estranged and who lives a totally anti-Hollywood life, also gets at his issues about getting older by being married and starting a family young. It also gives a chance for that very classic sitcom scenario of “trapped in an elevator with a pregnant lady”— and who better to force into that situation than Leah, who is incapable of being normal about anything?

In writing this, I wondered if maybe I could write an entire Alien parody, with Leah in the Ripley role, and, because I’m perverse, Meryl as the alien queen. SOMETHING TO NOODLE ON.



( Day #6 - Alien Parasite )

A ridiculous bit from the “Friendsgiving” episode I have been noodling on for Dream Machine. The premise of it is that when the shooting schedule runs over and everybody’s grumpy, nobody is able to travel for Thanksgiving. So Meredith tries to host everybody to try and raise spirits and do some team building, but folks are not feeling it. THEN HIJINKS OCCUR.

Other scenes I’ve written for this episode are, in rough order they would occur:

- ”Extreme Rendition”
- ”Friendsgiving”
- ”Emotional Potluck”
- ”Marching Orders”
- ”Competitive”
- ”Glorified Babysitters”

I think this one falls between “Marching Order” and “Competitive”. It’s very dumb and sitcommy, but with some polishing could be very funny. It also occurs to me that Devon should probably be in this scene, since he reacts to a certain character’s appearance. But I was trying to keep the character count down for some reason, so I kept some people out of the room. Still, I’ll have to fix that on a second pass.



( Day #4 - Special Delivery )

I saw the Deadpool and Wolverine movie last weekend and enjoyed it very much, as I tend to with Marvel movies— they just make me happy in an uncomplicated way. It also reminded me that it’s been a really long time since I wrote a new Text from Avengers Tower, so I better get on that.

The fun of this one was working to capture Deadpool’s, shall we say, particular speaking idiom. Besides his obvious colorful vulgarity, his sentences use vivid vocabulary, can be surprisingly complex in structure, and are jam-packed with imagery. One of the things I love to do in fan fiction is capture the spirit of the source material, particularly coming up with original dialogue that still sounds believably in the characters’ voices. Texts from Avengers Tower has the additional dimension of figuring out how those same characters would text, such that their voices come through filtered by the way they would use the technology.

I think I did an okay job of that here. 😆 Minor spoilers for the Deadpool and Wolverine movie.



( Day #2 - Hundred-Way )

Well, it’s that time again!



Another August, another 31 plays written in 31 days, a month-long writing challenge where I write one new dramatic scene for all thirty-one days. I’ve done it consistently every year since 2012, and even when it’s felt like a hassle or not the best use of my writing time, I’m always happy to have done it by the time I’m through.

I’ve found that the challenge is the most productive for me when I use it to force myself to draft for a specific planned project. While I don’t have anything as outlined as I prefer to when I start drafting, I do have a few things that I have been turning over in my brain that I could use motivation to actually put on paper. I’ve got an episode of Dream Machine, some shorts for Little Monsters, some Texts from Avengers Tower, a scenes for prose fics and original pieces, and of course, Mrs. Hawking part 8. If I can direct the creative energy it takes to come up with thirty-one scenes in a month— and it takes a fair bit —it will accomplish a lot for those projects.

As I’ve done for the past number of years, I adapt the rules of the challenge to my own purposes. I can write scenes of larger work instead of full plays, and the length doesn’t matter as long as the scene has a complete arc. The scene also has to be fresh drafting, not just an edited version of something I’ve already written. It’s a lot of work, but it’s served me well over the years, if only to generate some interesting pieces. But it’d be really nice if I can make some progress on important stuff, rather than just fill out my little listy list of what I wrote year after year.