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Drop it like it's hot! Or... Updates from Dee. :o)

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FrickingKaos:
Loved the new chapter. I was so excited that I read it right when I woke up this morning. I love these characters.

nicksgal:

--- Quote from: FrickingKaos on December 17, 2020, 08:23:34 AM ---Loved the new chapter. I was so excited that I read it right when I woke up this morning. I love these characters.

--- End quote ---

I'm a vat of smiles!!!! Thanks for the love, Delphina! This installment is definitely more character arc driven than the first one, so I'm glad it's the characters you love in this case.

nicksgal:
So this last week, I updated chapters 11-20 from PBox and chapter 2 of PNecklace. I hope you all enjoyed some more fun banter between Nick and Brian, some more introspection, and some cute Nick and Minako moments in the former and having our favorite demons back in the latter, mostly.

On our friend tiny persistent Nick's urging, I started this whole adventure with some rereading again. And while I was happy with the story as a whole, I hated the first part of Nick and Minako's relationship and I couldn't figure out why that was or what exactly I wanted to fix about it (other than starting over)... I'd remembered hating the 10/11/12 stretch from my first revisit to PBox, but I thought that was more about them being bare bones storytelling surrounded by juggernaut chapters when there was more to experience in those moments. But, when I started writing the interesting tidbits and snippets in PNecklace, I thought "Ah. Here is why."

They were supposed to have this epic love story in an equally epic place: champions for each other, fierce loyalty, a willingness to burst through hell for each other, and make sacrifices for each other, among other things. And that was there a little bit, but in the beginning, they just kind of jumped into it. And in the tidbits I started writing, their relationship had that epicness to it, but also this quiet maturity. Ah, here is why. Now that I'm in my thirties, I've had many more love stories than I had when I started writing PBox. I was only a senior in high school back then! My longest term love story at that point was probably my celebrity crush on Nick, which isn't much of a love story, much less an epic one. The problem, I realized, was that it was all very high school feeling, but what else would a high schooler really know? Ah. Here is why. And then it took me almost three years to finish. Looking back at 2008 when I finally finished it, no wonder I wanted to start editing the beginning the longer I kept writing it!

Nick's a little prickly in the beginning and he lashes out a lot, but I think his character would still fall for a rescue romance, for the first person who called him kind and not a monster, once he decided it was okay to feel that way or say it out loud without worrying about protecting his feelings. And Minako admits in story that she was taken in by his embrace, and then his smile, but she is a high school senior in PBox, so I think in the beginning that it's okay for her to think "this cute boy is nice to me, I love him" before growing into a deeper love and affection over time. I know I did that a lot in high school. Over the course of the story, they do start making those sacrifices for each other and supporting each other along the way, so it wasn't all a disaster. There just needed to be a few more little building blocks in the beginning to show it had the seeds of epicness and not just jumping in for the sake of it.

In general, the story has a lot of fire forged love (and friendship), that idea that when you go through tough things together, you come out unbreakable... Or so you think. That's probably the toughest part of their relationship to each other (and their friendships), the whole plot probably lasts... Maybe a month or two of story time at most. So the whole thing is kind of exacerbated by these life or death stakes. If you might die, what should you do with the time you do have? Anyway, I hope this rewrite sits better with everyone else too, keeps that epic feeling, discards the high schoolness of the situation, and even though it still is a quick leap, feels right for them and their adventure. We'll see how next week's PNecklace update goes! We couldn't leave our favorite persistent demon out of the story for too long!

Your delightful doodles this week:

Brian with his great hat

Brian without his accessories

Our favorite big bro Kevin

Howie in his battle outfit

Minako at the beginning of PNecklace

nicksgal:
In the meantime, happy holidays to everyone! Please enjoy a short story! Hopefully it makes you laugh and say "aww" many times.

Three Cheers for Christmas Time!

The Boys plan an early Secret Santa exchange before Brian and Kevin head back to Kentucky for the holidays. In typical fashion, Nick forgets until the gift exchange day and panic buys the first decent present he finds. Will his gift be a Christmas fail or will he find the true spirit of Christmas?


On the title, it feels like we should be getting a third BSB Christmas song some time in the next couple of years and I've always enjoyed that their only holiday songs are six years apart and called "Christmas Time" and "It's Christmas Time Again." So at this point, it makes perfect sense to me that every few years, they should make a new "Number reference plus Christmas Time somewhere in the title" song. Nick and I seem to have this same penchant for jokes like this and he helped write the second one, so I'm counting on you to fulfill this vision, Nick!

Link on AC above (just click the title), and if you enjoyed it enough that you want to leave a review on it forever, it's also on AO3: Three Cheers for Christmas Time on AO3

nicksgal:
A brand new story last week! I was involved in a few Secret Santas this holiday season and I thought BSB Secret Santa could be funny, especially if Nick just flat out forgot when it was. And then hilarity ensued. I think half of what I wrote ended up in there because it made me laugh more than me thinking it would make anyone else laugh. "Three Cheers for Christmas Time!" really highlights my favorite dynamics between the boys (I'm so sorry AJ and Howie!), I'm forever team Frick & Frack and Big Bro & Little Bro (does this have a name I'm unaware of?). I've consciously tried to have different dynamics in PBox & PNecklace as much as possible, but you'll definitely still catch leanings in there, especially when the groups split up. Frick & Frack is really nostalgic for me and their banter is just great. Plus I love that Brian can still make the dumbest jokes and Nick will die every time. It just gets me! And I melt every time for the dynamics of Nick and Kevin foiling, supporting, and loving each other. "The little one is the oldest and usually has to take care of people and the big one's the youngest and gets taken care of by people, but now in their chosen family, they're the opposite. Aww..." And then their serious vs silly dynamic, but the older I get, the more I think in the 90's that had a heavy basis in age dichotomy in addition to personality. In general, I'm a sucker for "band of brothers/chosen family/true companions," probably because of the Boys. It will get me every time, so I try to use it as much as possible in my own writing (even outside of BSB fanfic, but especially in BSB fanfic).

In this last week of 2020, I'm following my typical update schedule which has been the range between a cursory edit of my writing before posting and some overhauls of the next set of PBox chapters. Though a "cursory edit" for PNecklace is still about 600 different words. Also, this week's PBox update chunk was probably the last one with major overhauls, but as I say that, I'm currently fighting the urge to go Victor Hugo on you all and create a brand new chapter between this week's chunk and next week's chunk titled "I'd like to talk about mfin' castles for 20 pages"... and then I realized that I still just didn't do Aohouseki full justice... So go back to chapter 5 in a few weeks to watch me fully nerd out about castles, I guess... There were a lot of Renee/NSYNC focused chapters in this section, so I thought it would go better trying to edit them all at once, rather than one at a time -- like focusing on a story within a story, but I for sure kept straying from them to edit team BSB focused chapters, including trying to move on to the next 10 chapter chunk before finishing them! It got a little stressful at the end to make sure 21/22/23/25 were all squared away for today's update chunk (thank goodness it's winter break) and I definitely realized that I didn't have enough Renee/NSYNC in me to do ch. 23 full justice, so back we went to team BSB for some good times (I had a lot of fun adding that part, so I hope anyone reading along enjoys it too, it's basically a "so what do they do when they're traveling" snippet). It was nice taking a little PBox/PNecklace editing break and writing something new the past couple of weeks, though, but we're almost at the end of these massive edits, so yay!

2020 has been something else. I've become increasingly hermitish during the year. I only go two places: school and my house, though I know a lot of people don't even have two places, so I count this among my blessings. The longer this year has gone, the more I became the shrug emoji. Something bad happened? Sure, that seems like 2020. Something good happened? Good, I needed that in 2020, but what's next?

I'm very glad Nick and AJ were on TV for months. I needed that at the end of this year, it felt like going back to a simpler and more joyful time. Aside number two, I think this is why 80's Movie resonated with me so much, outside of Nick sounding great, the lyrics being great, and the music being great. Just replace "80's Movie" with "90's love song" and I 100% feel you, Nick -- though in general, I do love 80's movies more than others (#growinguppoor/#nocable) and appreciate your overall point, because he reads this obviously. I think it's that feeling of wanting to go back to not just simpler times, but childhood when it really did feel like anything was possible with a little effort and a lot of dreaming. And it can be, but it's definitely heavier on the effort side and also some other things more than just wanting or believing. I'm also glad that tiny demon Nick popped up to say "hello." It's just been a year between politics, working constantly day in and day out since March and feeling like you can't take a personal day because there's always more you can do to help the kids and their families, the stress of never knowing what will happen week to week this fall, the constant worry about what ifs in the pandemic, worry if you're doing enough in your volunteer roles/if you can do more for your community, some personal stressors about what's next for our little family... But writing and the 90's, what a nice thing to retreat into... Some place where there's other things to focus on and have a chance to get out of your head and anxieties for a little while.

On writing in particular, focusing on some literal demons and not some metaphorical demons has been a breath of fresh air in a lot of doom and gloom. I'm hoping I can keep it up in this new year because I think I always missed writing even when I wasn't doing it, but I just let the disappointment of failure get to me constantly. That's why tiny, persistent Nick and I celebrate every small thing, at least we did some writing. So I hope everyone found something to celebrate in 2020, no matter how small, writing-related or not, and will take the time to celebrate the little things in 2021. Cheers!

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