Well, that wasn't very smart.

So, I was working on a Ginger and Lou fic where they go to Lou's high school reunion. There's a bit of an unhappy reality check at one point and they leave with Lou wondering and worrying a bit where they're going to be in five years.

I'm in a dark mood and suddenly I decide that I want to do the fic for the Chances prompt, which I had thought up in October but didn't get around to writing and kept putting off because it sounded more depressing than I wanted to be right then.

I also decide that I want the fic to be even darker than planned.

The basic plot involves a spirit torturing them by giving them nightmares of what could have happened to them if they'd never met. I added to it by having the spirit first try giving them nightmares about them being old and left alone. Lou finds Ginger dead in his, while Ginger is trying to go on without Lou in his.

I was writing that part in the morning and I completely fell apart, bawling through the whole thing.

Very stupid. But it was a plunnie I've wanted to write in some form for a long time, just to try it, and I'd felt like I was ready to do so. It was a relief to then write them waking up in horror from that, but they and I were still reeling.

The actual, original part of the Chances prompt wasn't as difficult to write. I made it a little more interesting than nightmares of them not having met and being worse off for it; the spirit blocks their memories and makes them play out the scenarios: Ginger being executed on Death Row and Lou becoming a workaholic and dying from a heart attack after arguing with Mike. Then they end up in a strange, dark place together, each thinking it's the afterlife and not remembering much about each other. But they remember enough to realize they're important to each other and it ends up squeeable.

I still need to write the scene of them talking about things after the spirit releases them from the torture and unblocks their memories. They're definitely going to have some issues over that experience.

Overall, I think this piece is coming out well. But wow, that was stupid to actually try the first scenarios of one or the other dying for real when they're old. Although part of me is satisfied to have finally tried writing it. Maybe the plunnie will stop bothering me now that I've done something with it.

Also, I'm still debating over getting the train Pony with the haircut. I wish I could get out to that other Wal-Mart and see the powder blue Care Bear first, if they still have him, but I don't know if I'll be able to get out there this week. Sigh.

Hmm.

I got the Chances fic proofread and posted now. I'm quite pleased with it. And now I only have seven fics left to write! Seven out of the original 100 ... wow.

I'm still wondering what I'll do when I wrap that up. I'll want to keep writing about Ginger and Lou, but I'm not sure what prompt table to turn to next. I'd like in one way to stick with the comm I've been using, but I don't know what to think of taking out another 100 fics challenge. They don't offer smaller prompt tables. And I took some of the prompts from the other two tables to replace prompts I didn't like in my table, so I wouldn't want to write for those prompts a second time.

One reason why I like that comm so much is that the mod opened it up for anyone to write things for, instead of having to wait for claims to be accepted. Most comms just die with the "need to claim" rule in effect, and I worry slightly to just march in somewhere and start posting without having had a claim accepted, even if it doesn't seem like anyone's around.

Another reason I love that comm so much is because it's song-based, and music is such a big part of my life. There are other music-based writing comms, but I like this one, 100songs, the best.

Or I could just write whenever a 31_days prompt comes up that I like, but since there's a deadline for those, I kind of like the freedom to not always worry about deadlines.

EDIT: HELP I looked over the other two tables in the 100songs comm and there's only about two prompts I took from Table 3 and I like it better than Table 2 and I'm starting to seriously consider beginning it once I finish Table 1! Buwahaha. I must truly be mad!

And I read the Hardy Boys book I bought. I did get a bit of inspiration for my Riptide fic, so that's good. Overall, though, the book wasn't quite what I had hoped. I'm not sure whether I got a lesser volume or if I just wasn't in a Hardy Boys mood; I ended up thinking while I was reading that here was a good example of why I usually like Nancy Drew better. It just seemed kind of cheesy/corny in parts, especially some of Chet's dialogue. Nancy Drew usually seems less corny, in spite of the silliness of Nancy being good at so many things. (Coming to think of it, the Hardys are pretty good at many things too, really.) But both book series are corny in the older volumes and less so in the paperbacks. Sometimes the older ones feel really dated.

One thing I liked, though, was that Frank and Joe's dialogue was just about spot-on with the dialogue in the 1970's TV series. So that assures me that the TV series wrote them in-character in most ways. One silly thing the TV series did was to make Joe more reluctant many times, which is weird since he's the reckless, gung-ho brother in the books. I also detest how they have Frank treat Nancy in most of their episodes together; he acts like he sees her as a flighty, amusing female and doesn't respect her as a detective at all. (Nancy also screams way too much in the TV series, especially in season 2.) That is vastly different from the books, where they totally respect each other and have a lot of fun solving cases together. Of course, I suppose the TV series was the way it was because of when it was made, and sexism was a big topic in many series back then. But that doesn't make me like TV Frank's attitude any better. I'm actually really disappointed in Glen Larson that he allowed such an unflattering and sexist thing, especially when he had the perfect chance to do differently. It makes me lose a lot of respect for him. I suppose he could have honestly bought into the sexism too, but I seem to recall that his Battlestar Galactica females were strong and independent. (... Although there was sexism there too, like the episode called The Young Lords when there was a girl in the group too. Ugh.)

... And suddenly it occurs to me to have a little giggle over the boys' names being Frank and Joe. It brings to mind the Campanella brothers Frank and Joseph. I saw Frank in a Mannix episode last night, which thrilled me. It was a little like having Joseph there, in part, since they're family and their voices are so similar.