What a completely unpleasant surprise to come back and see that my journal layout has been distorted/ruined by giant advertisements. Seriously, what the hell, LJ? I've been using this site for over ten years and your ads were never so imposing. Once again, you've made yourself worse instead of better. Will you be surprised when no one goes here anymore? Now I can't even link my journal to outsiders without looking like a fool who doesn't have her layout in order.

Also, a big Fuck You to Photobucket, another site I have used for over a decade that was always simple and fair and now apparently charges FOUR HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS just to embed images into other websites. Again, I have been relying on PB to host my pictures since I was 15, there are at least a thousand photos on my account that I now have to sort through and reupload to some other site that's not going to be a dick about it.

So yeah, sorry everything's a mess right now? Maybe if I fork out some more money I can figure it out, which I totally have now that my rent, car insurance, and comcast package have all been hiked. The world we live in is so disgustingly greedy.

Well, for the time being, Open Office is still a free program, so I can write to my leisure, at least? pff.

He's There has made a bit of progress. I keep going back a chapter to fix stuff, having second thoughts about small choices made, just in general overthinking whether I have an effective sequence of events. BUT, people want updates, so they give me a reason to stop wallowing in what I've got and push forward. I'm really coming to a threshold, too, one I should be excited about. Chapter 14 (the next one I will work on, which is started too) will be the last chapter that I totally write from scratch. I think. Well, at least, there's about to be a lot of structural choices made in draft one that I can refer to so that I'm not having to work so hard on that. I can focus on improving the scenes that were there, and adding a few big things that were introduced prior to them and kind of back-burnered. Sometimes, I think draft one's problem was that it would build drama and then just drop it, or let it kind of float around. Everything should have been snow-balling, otherwise it makes Lily look more like a fool than a girl who's faced with too much to handle, ideologically and emotionally, and makes mistakes from the pressure.

Ugh, even thinking about it gives me anxiety. I actually spend a lot of time feeling anxious that I'm not going to get things right. Or I'm going to forget about something that would have been a really moving, effective aspect to a relationship or a situation, and I won't know how to fit it in when I go back. I've already done that with the second draft, or I realized that something was too intense to go in yet, so I had to hold off on it.

One of the big differences between the second arc (which I'm now finishing) and the third is that the second is all about subtlety and nuance, while the third is full of confessions and discoveries that shed light on what the second arc was hinting at without it being appropriate to lay out on the table. But then it also raises new questions and higher stakes. It doesn't help Lily or the reader actually feel they're standing on more stable ground. It's getting shakier, the more truth you pile on. Lily invites this by the end of the second arc. She thought things were one way when they weren't, and "Erik" busted her for this while he was making her jump through a ton of hoops to prove he could be more honest with her.

Also, you know what's interesting about the second draft is that I've had to have Paulina be a lot more aware of what's wrong about her relationship with "Erik", whereas in draft one I kind of stupidly had her being supportive when someone as socially savvy and romantically experienced as her should have known better. I've now switched things so that it's actually Mariam that's kind of tone-deaf about these things, and distracted. It really takes this upcoming conflict, which Lily puts behind her but which the Giry girls think is a giant red flag, for Mariam to start feeling resentment towards "Erik" and inward paranoia about him. She's going to start being a bit passive aggressive; she won't have the energy to joke as much about him, and then it'll all fizz over when Lily starts drifting from her in order to be there for "Erik".

Oy. All this time thinking about it instead of writing it, and I don't have a lot of time to spare to begin with. Well, I suppose every now and then it's good to get stuff out of your head.

Thanks, to anyone who still reads...

I plotted all of yesterday, and I elaborated several things this morning. There's still a little bit more work that needs to be done, perhaps some sporking notes I need to reread to get myself remembering all the things I wanted to do better for this section, but I actually feel the motivation to do it now that a significant amount of organizing has been completed.

And it feels great! It actually feels like chapter writing is on the horizon instead of the vague fantasy I've had of it the past year or so. *sigh* I'm always going to beat myself up for the months, even years, I've wasted not finishing my projects, but at least the fire still burns. At least this story still matters to me. At least people still care about it! These are all good things, yeah?

I think what inspired me to do it was actually just rereading a little bit of The Phantom of the Opera again. I got to the scene when Erik and the Persian are arguing about whether or not Christine actually loves him, and Erik is such a little shit, and then he says "welp, gotta go, I need to do some shopping". Somehow, this character who is a terrible person is just... so delightful. I can't explain it. And more, I like incorporating him into my "Erik", the way other adaptations have stirred him in while still going in their own directions.

Speaking of which, I had the pleasure of rewatching Charles Dance with a new friend who wasn't familiar with Phantom besides ALW and the silent film, and I was reminded how great his and Teri Polo's performances were. I love those two. But one particular thing I remembered is how Charles' Erik portrays depression. The way he so matter-of-factly mentions the way that he lives, the apathetic way he talks about his own death. When Christine says "there's more" to love than the platonic sort of relationship that they have at this point, and he says "I'm sure there is, but not for me."

This, I think, is how my "Erik" will insert so many true admissions without Lily being sure he means it. Just casually, as the character would say, talk about how no one cares, how he can't sleep, how pain is inevitable or necessary. I mean, she engages him in these conversations, she asks questions, she shows support, but... the alarm bells don't ring right away.

Anyway, said what I need to. I will post again when there's a chapter done.