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Being confronted with my earlier, terrible drafts of various TEF scenes is some form of psychological torment. It's funny, I feel like most of the stuff I wind up posting is just straight up "Here's the earlier, boring version of whatever you read" but this stuff, ugh. This is straight up "LOL YOU GUYS THOUGHT I WAS A DECENT WRITER WELL FEAST YOUR EYES ON THIS HOT GARBAGE AND PREPARE TO EAT YOUR HATS MY FRIENDS"
That said, there are some bits sandwiched in between the cringe that I actually still like, aside from how I wrote Blossom towards the end - she gets really damsel-y, because UGH past!sbj. That was one of several things that motivated my complete overhaul of this chapter, with the biggest simply being the tone. It was far too serious, which at the time I felt was fitting because canonically, Citysville is supposed to be a dumpster fire of a city played straight, with all the cartoonish elements that make the actual PpG show so fun stripped out of the episode it features in. I originally completed and sent this draft to beta in January 2011; my next draft of it is dated May 2018. Ha.
I'm glad I had that time away from it; it was probably around 2016 or 2017 that I went back to it and realized I hated the tone, it skewed too heavily from Brick's POV, and for some reason it didn't account for events that had led up to the chapter (e.g., there was very little mention of the Reds' date from ch9 - a mere month ago, in-story). At the end of the day, the only major story element that was salvageable was Buttercup wailing on the asshole that smacked her, and even that was scaled back from what was originally a much longer, tedious fight scene. Sedusa, the White Cat, and Aunt Lilith weren't even in my original draft.
( So, in short: Fuck Citysville. )
There's more - WAY more - but it's real bad, so don't hold your breath! Unless I make the time to redline it with commentary similar to what I did here, years ago.
That said, there are some bits sandwiched in between the cringe that I actually still like, aside from how I wrote Blossom towards the end - she gets really damsel-y, because UGH past!sbj. That was one of several things that motivated my complete overhaul of this chapter, with the biggest simply being the tone. It was far too serious, which at the time I felt was fitting because canonically, Citysville is supposed to be a dumpster fire of a city played straight, with all the cartoonish elements that make the actual PpG show so fun stripped out of the episode it features in. I originally completed and sent this draft to beta in January 2011; my next draft of it is dated May 2018. Ha.
I'm glad I had that time away from it; it was probably around 2016 or 2017 that I went back to it and realized I hated the tone, it skewed too heavily from Brick's POV, and for some reason it didn't account for events that had led up to the chapter (e.g., there was very little mention of the Reds' date from ch9 - a mere month ago, in-story). At the end of the day, the only major story element that was salvageable was Buttercup wailing on the asshole that smacked her, and even that was scaled back from what was originally a much longer, tedious fight scene. Sedusa, the White Cat, and Aunt Lilith weren't even in my original draft.
( So, in short: Fuck Citysville. )
There's more - WAY more - but it's real bad, so don't hold your breath! Unless I make the time to redline it with commentary similar to what I did here, years ago.
