Current mood:	good
Current music:	John working on piano music

Whatz the problem
Episode Fifteen progress:

Pages 10/≈30
Words 5000/≈16000

Between Kingdoms Progress:
Words 90,000/≈200,000?

Ha ha. I made a pun.

*sound of crickets chirping*

So, one of my main party characters, Whatz, is a bit of a conundrum for me. We have kind of an on-and-off relationship. I mean that in a squeaky clean way. I can't decide how I feel about his character. (If you care, he comes from a world where stout people dwell underground and he has a drinking problem due to academic failure.)

(This world is really way more creative than it sounds. I swear.)

One minute I'm all, "Whatz sucks. This character is stupid and bland. he has no flaws. He doesn't act drunk enough for someone who's supposed to be drunk." Then the next minute I'm all like "Whatz is an awesome character! Most people just play the idea of a dwarf-like race drinking for laughs, but he's a serious treatment! It's a Twist on the norm(tm)!"

There is a lot I like about this character. I like how his sorrow in life isn't centered around something ominous, sudden and life-shattering, like the death of a parent, a war-time tragedy, a physical defect like blindness. It's failure--the problem so many older people have where things just go wrong, and they go wrong, and then they go wrong some more--but it happens slowly, it happens partly because of the choices you've made, and it leaves a much more bitter taste in your mouth.

Instead of Whatz being young, I like how he's old. When a young person has this kind of failure in their past, it somehow feels conquerable to the audience, to the character even, no matter how much the dark angsty character puts up the pretense of "Oh, I'll never amount to anything."

I think, when you're old, it just stings. Because then everyone believes you'll never amount to anything.

Maybe, hopefully, even the audience.

If I'm lucky.

Moon Senshi stuff

Meanwhile, on the Moon Senshi front, I'm including more Sailor Quartet scenes. I've decided. It's happening.

Originally, I was gonna have them spirit off pretty quickly (and no, I'm not telling anyone any more than that) but I decided that was totally lame. I already feel like I've jipped them as characters.

So I'm bring them into the forefront first. We'll get little hints of what's going to happen to them later, but it probably won't pan out until the end of the Arc, maybe a bit earlier depending on how far I get with them as characters.

There's a picture in the fifth artbook of Saturn, Chibimoon, and the four Asteroids. In the commentary she writes, "One of these days I'm going to put this team together into the manga. "

I thought that was a pretty cool idea. It's already happened to some extent (with Saturn being a "teacher" in arc 1 while Chibi-Usa and the Quartet go to school) but I'd like to do a little more with that idea, extend it some during Sailor Nemesis' time before the Quartet makes their grand exit (no, I won't be axeing them. I like the Quartet too much for that!)

So it looks like Hotaru will be making a return as a teacher at Goban. Probably to keep an eye on the Nemesis threat while still giving Usako (aka Chibi-Usa) some measure of independence and control over the proceedings. I'm looking forward to writing some of these scenes.

I also have the Quartet working more "behind the scenes" at the Crystal Palace, which means they'll going to meetings in Princess dresses. My newest scene has them talking with Lady Serenity before they go to talk with Senshi Warriors about the Nemesis threat.

Then I realized, My god, the Quartet hasn't a thing to wear!!

So I designed them all princess gowns. I'm actually really proud of them. I'll probably do a watercolor painting of these designs at some point.

In the meantime, my authorly ramblings are over.