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

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nicksgal:
I apologize. I've written another novel about my novel... Good thing I split it up into two parts!

So most of my last month and a half has been spent doing PBox justice via editing so it better aligns with PNecklace in overall feel and because l'd been wanting to edit it since 2007. Why? Let's hop in our DeLorean and go back to 2005! Picture it: Never Gone came out in June, you worked really hard on the comic that became Gobosei, the second day of your senior year of high school was the BSB concert and it was all the way in Loveland (and the traffic is always terrible), you skipped doing your APUSH homework for the Backstreet Boys and your mother was not pleased, who knows if Nick ever actually read your comic that you made him, your mother was bothering you about the SATs and the ACTs, you had a dream about a demon who looked like Nick, you started writing PBox... This is clearly a very personal reflection on 2005, haha. You probably only related to that first nostalgic fact: Never Gone came out in June. I've also said most of this already (minus the semi-specific snippets about my high school days).

Back in ye olden days, I was really involved in the message boards of a site called BSBBLVD and had posted my fanfics there since I started writing them (because they allowed that on a message board for some reason?).  Some time in late 2005, I started seeking out different fan sites that were requesting fanfic submissions to host the ones I thought deserved some more attention and could be really well loved. And by ones, I really just mean PBox (I didn't start converting Gobosei to novel format until after high school graduation), though I'm sure I submitted some other stuff so they would give PBox a chance. Truthfully, it's probably still out there with the first few chapters in at least a couple different places (I'm curious what ch. 1-9 really used to look like! I have a vague idea, of course, but the oldest version I have reliable access to is from 2008 when I finished the story and had already started editing the beginning.)

Then some time in early 2006, I stumbled on AC. I thought, "OMG, a website where the only thing people do is read, write, and post fanfics?! And I can manage my own stuff?! I must join this website!" So I signed up right away, super excited that "nicksgal" wasn't taken. I'd been nicksgal for six or seven years at that point, so it would have been weird to be anyone else. I'm sure y'all have always been curious, why nicksgal? As mentioned, it started from BSBBLVD where you needed a username and I'm sure that whatever cringy 90's slangy name I wanted was already taken... I can't even remember, honestly, but I probably originally wanted something like nicksqtpie or nicksbabygirl or nickssweetiepi e or nicksgrl (because no one likes vowels!)... I think I eventually settled on nicksgal because 1. It was available! (the most important reason to pick a username) and 2. Well, it seems Westerny and I'm clearly a rough and tumble wild west gal out here in Colorado, ptoo (hahaha, I am not, as you know "rough and tumble" are not adjectives to describe me at all). I probably also actually wanted to be "Nick's Gal," but you know, spaces and apostrophes in usernames... (I'm also really excited it was available on AO3. I was ready to throw down with whoever was using my pen name.)

Anyway, we're actually here talking about the history of PBox (apparently instead of editing), not usernames. I signed up for AC, read some fanfics, and then excitedly uploaded the first 19 chapters of PBox at one time. I had no concept of holding on to anything at the time. "I wrote this, I'm so excited, read it right now!" Like excitement word vomit. And then I probably took a few months where I added a few chapters a week (end of high school and such), and then at the start of the summer of 2006, I think I had a hot section where I was adding a chapter in the late twenties and early thirties every day (the update chunk from the end of December and beginning of January). Every single day. (How did I manage that?!) That's also when the chapters started being meaty and had those walls of text, so I'm even more surprised by that, honestly. Then I took some time off as college started and thought I could reasonably handle two updates a week. (How?!)

And then I went months between updates, but when I updated, I still updated two chapters in one week, because once I pushed through one chapter, I was usually very inspired to write the next one and then it would hit 1 or 2am and I would say "I can write or I can go to bed?" I usually picked bed by the third chapter (smart choice). Honestly if I had a whole month to do nothing but write, I feel like I could probably finish a whole novel in one sitting as long as I had the initial spark of inspiration. At that time, my great downfall was this message board (ch. 35ish seems like about the time this started), "OMG, a message board only for people who read and write fanfics?! We're going to be best friends! I must join!" I think I spent more time being a "supreme time waster" here than I did writing much of anything during that time except collaborations . And then the burnout became real and overwhelming.. . But we can talk about that next time! (Or, next next time as the case will be.)

I've looked over my old author notes at the beginning of the chapters and laugh every time I see a "Sorry this took so long!" I don't even know why I thought people would stop reading it if I took more than a day to get another chapter up. That excited word vomit probably. Of course, the excited word vomit has its major downsides. First, obviously, burnout. No matter how much you love something, you will eventually hit a wall or run out of ideas or stare at your two sentence notes that say "Kevin's power to heal is awesome and he wins. There's plants." or "AJ has a hard time against some sort of spirit power, but eventually wins, because he's great." and think "What?" But you're almost done at that point, so you just keep trucking on. Second, you clearly needed a break at that point, but just wouldn't let yourself have it. And since you're not able to excitedly word vomit, you focus on the burnout. Third, real life rears its ugly head. You just can't always escape into writing or anything. There's always unintended consequences. Fourth, everything probably needs some time to settle, including your excitement. Just like you don't drink your coffee right after brewing it. You're so intimately involved with your writing that you know what you meant, but no one else can be inside your brain in the same way. So there's probably plenty of things to change that you just don't notice right away since your brain is filling in the blanks for you. Fifth, you don't take the time to notice stupid spelling mistakes or awkward portions for the reasons mentioned above. You're just too close to it. I was editing one of the PBox chapters and found that I'd accidentally written "aroused" when I clearly meant "roused." I laughed for a long time because that's clearly not what I meant, but it made it hilarious. And then I cringed knowing that was just there making it very awkwardly hilarious for however many years. And then I changed that sentence completely without either word.

This derailed from my plan to talk about my thoughts on editing until the end a moment ago, but I think maybe this is a two part discussion on the history of PBox more than it's only a discussion about editing. I'll continue it in two weeks, next week I'll talk more about editing. Also I don't know if they're spam bots or actual people reading, but it has been elating to watch the little read counter go up on PNecklace and even PBox. Someone or something has clicked on PBox over 35,000 times over the past decade? 160ish for five chapters of PNecklace? Thanks! Hopefully people are enjoying them. And maybe having to wait a week for a new chapter makes it more satisfying to see the next one. Onward! This is the second to last week where I'm posting PBox edits. We almost made it! It's probably felt like an excited word vomit on AO3 posting 5-10 chapters at a time, but I figured it was fine for a story that already existed in fully published form somewhere else. That and I didn't want to put off the PNecklace excited word vomit longer than necessary, in case I decided that I wanted to post it all at once from the excitement.

nicksgal:
I forgot your weekly pictures in my last post! (Happens when I'm too busy posting a novel about my novel, I suppose.)

No PBox pictures this week, I'm going to save them for when I finish uploading the last five chapters. But, now there's new PNecklace pictures this week. Although I'm just now realizing that I never said what Howie, Brian, and AJ were wearing this week and they definitely also changed, so oops! I might have to go fix that really quickly. In case you were wondering, yes, Howie is the one dressing all of them. That's why Nick looks so dapper and stylish once he gets new clothing, haha.

Nick in his shiny gold pants

Minako stopped running around in her school uniform

Kevin has a simpler aesthetic

Please find updates as follows (links included in titles):

Pandora's Box on Absolute Chaos (with shiny updated chapters 41-45, and now you get to know just what Nick thinks about when he's "full demon" because you didn't get to know before!)

Chapter Six ("Alliance") of Pandora's Necklace on Absolute Chaos

Pandora's Box on AO3 (now has the first 45 chapters available if you only want to read fully updated chapters. Soon, there will be all 50!)

Enjoy! Continue to feel free to ask me anything and get answers. Who was surprised that the crater came back and was actually important? Anyone? No? I wonder why it makes Nick catatonic?! Place your guesses below. It's lonely fireside chatting with yourself.

FrickingKaos:
Loved the new PNecklace chapter as usual :)

That little twist at the end with the priestesses was really great. Can’t wait for more.

nicksgal:
Yay! Thanks Tracy! PBox et al. is, unfortunately, a victim of "loads and loads of characters," so you're about to meet a bunch of them over the next few chapters. Hopefully they're all fun.

I may be over here dropping bombshells for the next couple of weeks, so there's definitely some things to look forward to. Muahahaha.

nicksgal:
Since the last five chapters of PBox are getting their edits posted today, I decided to save The History of PBox Part Two and the final planned images for next week. However, if you like PBox doodles, you're in luck! I like to doodle these characters (and/or Nick... whatever), so there's a good chance you'll see more doodles of them soon.

Fun with PBox is a lot shorter than some of my more recent novels about this novel. I wanted to show you some very old PBox pictures and settle a debate. So first, pictures, I guess?

As they exist now, the PBox demons definitely fall more into the "cute monster" category. However, in the beginning, I absolutely had plans to make them harsher and scarier looking. Unfortunately for me and my love of dark and macabre things, plucky Nick just isn't harsh or scary. So he quickly went from harsh and scary to smirking bad*** to the cute monster we know and love. And that's not to say that plucky, cute monster Nick can't be a smirking bad*** or harsh and scary, he just lives most of his life in his plucky zone.

It's something we'll talk about more as PNecklace goes on, but you've probably noticed by now that while Nick started the story off in "defrosting ice king" mode, he's not really sugar and ice (sometimes sweet, sometimes cold/icy for those of you who don't like tropes as much as I do). Rather, he's sugar and fire (sometimes sweet, sometimes hot/fiery)! But he spends most of his time in "sugar" because when he's in sugar mode, he actually gets what he wants: acceptance, friendship, love, etcetera. The things he didn't know he wanted when he started PBox, but the things it turns out that he needed to feel whole. When he's in "fire," he gets more negative reactions from those around him, but not the negative reactions he’s been conditioned to expect. Fire mode is definitely one of his coping mechanisms, but again, we can talk about that later when the time comes. The point of this little tangent was that smirking bad*** and harsh and scary both fall under fire mode. Cute monster? So much sugar.

If you’d like a visual of how the demons evolved, please see below. If memory serves me correctly, I drew most of these in Calculus my senior year of high school, because I sat in the back and my teacher loved overhead projectors.

Here’s a “harsh and scary” looking Nick.

This is what I would call the “smirking bad***” phase.

And this is the one I can’t find the original for, but here’s about when they turned into “cute monsters.”

I found some wild things when I went searching for old PBox doodles. As you've probably learned, I'm a bit of a hoarder, so it’s actually really surprising that I can’t find the original version of the “cute monster” phase. Maybe as I keep digging, it will turn up. I'm starting to have a sneaking suspicion of where it may have wandered off to, so I'll adjust the image accordingly if I can find it. Below, please find a random assortment of PBox doodles or things I found while digging:

Nick next to a doodle of a pig

A cute Nick out of markers

A little Nick and Minako sketch

A tiny Nick face

A handwritten portion of ch. 23 “Connected.” Apparently I was on a writing roll or something when this one popped up, since  I don't typically write by hand.

A handwritten portion of ch. 49 “Nozomeru.” Which is even more surprising since I had many more writer’s blocks during this portion of the story.

Next, let's settle a debate! I was once told: "You open a lot of chapters talking about darkness." So I thought, what's more fun than sifting through PBox for some of our favorite thematic words!

"dark"/"darkness" appears 617 times! I’ve mentioned many times that the demon world is “bleak and dreary” and what better way to convey that than talking about darkness?

"cold" appears 111 times, especially once they get to Rubiihoppou.

"lonely" appears 36 times, which seems surprising on its own, but it only appears 13 times after the first ten chapters. Probably because someone (Nick, obviously) is no longer lonely.

"light" appears 368 times. I wonder if this number jumps in PNecklace? Is it feeling a little brighter so far?

"warm" appears 154 times.

"bright" appears 150 times.

So how many chapters do start with a discussion on darkness? Only thirteen of them! Eight of them are about death and six are about cold, so it all seems pretty normal? Three of them start talking about a sunrise, sunlight, and the light of hope, so let’s focus on the positives here! And the intro isn’t always an indicator of a chapter’s content; for instance, the fluffy wedding chapter definitely starts off talking about curses, so... :shrug:

Last bit of fun, Nick and Minako say each other's names several times throughout the story and often loudly. How many times? Nick says/thinks Minako’s name 287 times. Minako says/thinks Nick’s name 271 times.

Overall, here’s how many of the million words in this story are the Boys’ names (In general, only 10 of the chapters do not include at least one of the Boys. Gotta give the villains the spotlight sometimes, you know?):

AJ (who appears in 13 chapters, sorry AJ) has his name (or some variant) appear 312 times.
Kevin (who appears in 21 chapters) has his name appear 394 times.
Howie (who appears in 26 chapters) has his name (or some variant) appear 492 times (sorry Howie).
Brian (who appears in 24 chapters) has his name appear 662 times.
Nick (who appears in 36 chapters) has his name appear 1,992 times. Yes, his name is 1% of all the words lovingly written to convey the juggernaut that is PBox.

Hope you had fun with PBox this week!

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