A cupful of fangirldom and a spinkle of authorship

 

Ayanami Rei is my favorite character from the series. Back when I was working on City of Light: InterLock, I decided to borrow her character design for my character of Tera Rogue. Bluish-grey hair and red eyes have evolved into an anime archetype. InterLock never got anywhere, of course. The story is still somewhere in my notes, but I haven't a clue what to do with it, if anything.

For a while I was entertaining the idea of a large story involving Avatar://Create, a friend's idea for a story, Avatar://Alternity, and then finally Avatar://InterLock. It's an intriguing idea, perhaps I'll write it someday.

If I get around to writing anything that is! It's been a week since I posted my thought about the "Writing Lifecycle", and I've done nothing. I've tried a few times to sit down and produce something for the story, but nothing came of it. I began to suspect that I need to journal a bit first before I start hacking out a mind map.

One of the biggest ideas I would like to explore would be Novella coming out to her parents. Most parents do not react well to their child's gender dysphoria. What complicates matters is that most of the time, the condition is self-diagnosed. It's not an unheard of story for parents of a transperson to take their child from therapist to threapist until they hear something acceptable. Apparently, suicidal depression or general insanity is preferable to a change of sex. Sadly, it's also not an uncommon story for transpeople to be kicked out or outright disowned by their family. I expect Novella's parents to react in a similar negative fashion.

I feel Novella's situation would not be as extreme as either of these cases. Novella's family may initially ignore Novella's issues, but eventually condemn them when they realize that she's serious and clear minded. Family is an important subject to Novella, as she feels her intent to transition would result in her being disowned -- formally or not. I was thinking that this would become apparent during either Christmas vacation, or spring vacation during the school year. In the last revision I decided that the story covers one college year of time. With the vacations between chapters 2 and 3, and 3 and 4. I would like this to culminate over the Christmas holiday, but that may not be possible. If Novella reveals her intentions over Christmas vacation, there may not be enough time for it to effect the holiday. Instead, Novella may bring this up during the brief Thanksgiving break.

This makes for another problem. If Novella is obviously snubbed at Christmas, why would she return home for spring break? My thought is she may be guilty or feel obligated into visiting. This may explain why she returns half-way through break to find Akisa shortly after her first suicide attempt.

It's not likely I'll be working on this idea further this evening. In less then an hour, I'm going to a concert for one of my favorite bands, Tool. Tomorrow I should have some time.