Coded azure.

Friday 15 September 2006

Screenshot anime Futakoi

Pic of the day: Lacking screenshots from Ultra Maniac, I guess this one from Futakoi might convey some of the feeling...

NaNoWriMo ideas

It is only a month and a half till NaNoWriMo, the novel writing month. For the first time since I joined this creative madness, I have not nursed an idea since summer. In fact, I was beginning to worry that I might not come up with an idea at all, much less a plot, before November 1. Perhaps my creativity is simply fading; after all, the midlife mass death of brain cells is second only to the one during puberty. But lately, an idea has shown up that is every bit as outrageous as anything I have come up with before.

I am "borrowing" this idea from two sources, at least. One is a dream I read about in slow wave, the online comic. In that dream, a pet lizard became a boy when the girl was alone with him. I would prefer a cat. One reason for this may be an episode of an anime I watched a couple years ago (Ultra Maniac), in which a friendly witch transformed a cat into human form at the behest of its owner, a young boy. Unfortunately the cat, which was now himself a young boy, retained his clingy and affectionate personality. He still wanted to lie in his owners lap, not to mention the bed. This amused the girls much more than the boy, and in the end the witch had to turn him back into cat.

At first this was all I had to go by. I had not even decided on the gender of the cat or the owner, but I was beginning to think that there should be an external love interest. After all, the only things important enough to write about is love and death, right? And death is a lot less funny. I quickly decided that I could not have a girl as the main character; I simply don't understand girls well enough for that. So, the main character is a young boy, probably in his very late teens,18 or 19. I still had not decided on the gender of the cat, but the external love interest would be a girl. Writing about a gay main character would not be much easier than writing about a girl. So that leaves us with two very different possible stories. If the cat is male, the story becomes a comedy. If the cat is female, the story becomes erotic.

Right now I am in favor of a male cat which transforms randomly into a pretty, slender boy. The fur does probably not transform into clothes; after all, humans have hair too, there is just less of it and more concentrated. I see catboy as fairly long-haired. The owner (who will have a short name, but I have not decided on it) is probably extra virgin, painfully shy and unsure in his heterosexuality. And the girl is probably a classmate or some such, bold and outgoing (otherwise they would never establish contact at all) but not very interested in sex and with somewhat unrealistic notions about romance. This seems the best combination of personalities for a story that can stay Teen-rated and have lots of fun. I am aiming at humor first and romance second. When I try to write pure romance, it ends up as angst and very stiff writing. Humor is what I do best. I guess you can say I grew up that way.

I will probably have an anime-inspired atmosphere in general, although it will be set in either Norway or North America... the two are often difficult to tell apart when I write them, perhaps because I have never been in America. But the hyperactive characters, too childish for their intellect, and the likelihood of unlikely events will be the same as in Japanese serial art. For instance my muse presented this possible first sentence:
When your mother is an UFO-chasing NewAge archaeologist and your father is a mad inventor, it doesn't matter who sends you a package: It is bound to be trouble.
The package is likely a statuette of the cat-goddess Bast (or some equivalent) from his mother, but I'm sure his father could whip up some suspicious gadget too. In fact, now that I think about it, having their two birthday presents interact would be an ideal way to make the impossible happen.

Like in animanga, the main character is living alone in a small house while his mother is abroad (his father has never lived with them, but resides in his hidden lair somewhere in the wilderness). He is probably used to this, and besides he is practically an adult. He can cook his own food, not that the girl is likely to believe that for a moment.

OK, I think we have a good start here. I have plenty of time to develop a plot. Not that I need it, with catboy love.


Yesterday <-- This month --> Tomorrow?
One year ago: HP hw6515
Two years ago: Plantronics day
Three years ago: Anno 1503 review
Four years ago: Love is a bug
Five years ago: The near future
Six years ago: Innocent until arrested
Seven years ago: Allergic to rain

Visit the archive page for the older diaries I've put out to pasture.


Post a comment on the Chaos Node forum
I welcome e-mail. My handle is "itlandm" and I now use gmail.com.
Back to my home page.