Babble about Pleasant Surprise

[blossomdreams]

After doing the meme I thought I would finally organize all my thoughts about the series so far. If you have any questions about the world or characters please ask. ^_^

The questions on the friending meme got me thinking about Pleasant Surprise and the history behind it. I started thinking about it and I organized everything into an essay. Well, it’s more about me rambling about my love of the paranormal genre, anime, and romance. There is some Meta and maybe a bit of social commentary. You know, what normally goes through my mind.

The History

Let’s start with how the idea came about. Back when I was a bright eyed college student, my friends and I came up with an idea about vampires after talking about our fondness for the genre. The plan was for Adam, a vampire, to find Zero, a guy with no memories, naked in the closet of his family’s hotel. Adam would look for a way to help Zero with his friends and family along for the ride. Also, Zero could turn into a vacuum, it was our first year, we were pretty silly back then.

Anyway everything went well at first. I had a notebook for ideas, looked up thing to put in their world, and different ways the vampire clans could identify each other. We exchanged notebooks and talked about ideas, I thought we were on the right track. Until, my now ex-friend, started dating the most upstanding jerk in nice guy’s clothing.

After that everything changed, she started pressuring me to give up control of Adam’s family and the little things I made, such the jewelry ideas and the early designs of their family crest. When I refused to give it up she used her boyfriend and his friends to try and bully me. When I refused again it turned into an epic space battle, well, not really though that sounds better than the real version.

The real version we had a blowup where a lot of hurtful things were said. I stopped talking to her and I put my characters away for a long time. I pretty much convinced myself that original fic wasn’t my thing and turned my focus to school. However, two years later I stumbled across the story again after looking for a notebook to use for class. In those two years, I became a makeshift caretaker for my terminally ill dad and I wanted to vent my feelings about it. I started a fanfic about it, but I changed too many things to fit my own situation that I returned to original fic.

I threw the notebook away and changed things around in the original draft. Adam became a fire demon, Zero became a dog demon, and Coven became a community out of a three that hosted paranormal kind. The changes continued to Bernard being silly, Alene became a healer, and two others worlds formed.

After I reclaimed my original characters, more started to pop up like Seth and Claire. Seth started out in my first NaNoWriMo story as a demon who upset his parents by falling in love with an angel. I started writing that one, until I thought what if his father was killed by an angel, and then years later he fell in love with one. Thus, Seth’s family was born. This may or may not have been a scrapped D N Angel fanfic idea only it was between a thief and a cop.

After I finished the changes I decided to give original fic another go.

I’m pretty glad I did.

 

Influences

There are different influences throughout Pleasant Surprise some on purpose, some on accident, but all from the things that I love. I’m a fan of anime, paranormal, and fantasy. I grew up watching vampires, werewolves, and other things that go bump in the night. One of my favorite horror movies about psychic powers is Carrie by Stephen King. I’m a Harry Potter fan, on top of paranormal/horror. I watched many 90s anime of epic space fights, magical girls, giant robots, pop stars, pirates, ninjas, and women saving their princess.

Anime influenced a lot of my characters like Bernard, the goofy dad who’s a secret badass. Alene, the love of his life, who’s badass too. Adam, the bookworm with the bad temper, Angelique his evil scientist sister, Albert the one guy who’s not afraid of ghosts, but is afraid of everything else, and the list goes on and on.

I’m a big fan of history. I love reading about the past and the way things have changed throughout the ages that I tried to put that in there with the way each generation feels about each other. When Michel was a young man demons mated only with demons. When Bernard grew up demons learned they could mate with others, then with Adam there’s more mixture than before.  I used history to form different reasons why each community separated from the human world.

I love researching history.

I’m a big romance fan. I loved sneaking my mom’s romance books late at night when I didn’t understand what “quivering bosom” meant yet. I’m a fanfic writer, the type of fanfic writer that puts together two characters who only had a couple episodes or chapters together and find a way for them to fall in love. I like trying to find ways to see how they would fall in love without changing the characters too much. Writing love stories between unconventional characters is one of my favorite things to do. It’s one of the reasons there are couples like Fire Demon Christophe and Necromancer Albert. I tried to put in things that I loved reading and/or watching and see if I could write something with those tropes.

The reason behind a slice of life story with demons

I’ve read and watched many shows about the lives of vampires, werewolves, and other creatures considered evil that I wanted to see what it would be like for demons. I have a bit of a confession I’ve always liked the demons in various paranormal shows like Charmed or Supernatural. Whenever I watched the show I wondered what it would be like for a Fire Demon to teach his kid how to control their powers or a Sky Demon to fly. Watching anime with demons doing things like making dinner added to my curiosity that I started thinking about the lives of angels, faeries, and humans who could see all these creatures.

That’s it in a nutshell though I want to write a space AU space soon because Bernard in space.

Couples or characters: who came first?

It’s a cross between the two. The couples came first then I built the story around them. It started with Adam and Zero, they were the main couple in the original draft, but the original outline didn’t have friends or family that’s when Bernard appeared. Alene came around the same time when I wrote a scene about Bernard having a crush on the nurse that treated his injuries all the time. I kept Adam’s six siblings and paired them up based on the way they reacted to the person I chose, until everyone was happy.

When I think about it Adam didn’t kick off the characters it was Bernard. After I made Bernard and Alene that’s when Albert, Bernard’s long suffering best friend, appeared. Then Bernard’s siblings and their mates, then Alene’s family and friends. Bernard has kicked off many things except Sam and Ed. They were in the back of my mind, but they spoke up during the Midsummer Nights’ challenge on Rainbowfic. I had girlfriends planned out for them, but they kicked up a fuss whenever I tried to write it, so Emma and Christina became their friends.

I know for me many of my friends is part of my family and I wanted to show that.

Music

I could go on and on about music, so I’ll try to keep it short. I love music! Music played a big part in helping me figure out the characters and the world they lived in. Much of the music on the playlists I have are music I’ve grown up listening to through my family. I’ve listened to music from a variety of eras though I have to say my favorite is the 80s. I don’t know why it’s just something about 80s music that I love so much!

I couldn’t leave the 90s out there are a lot of sexy R & B music I listened to that I had no idea what the song meant, but it had a nice beat. There are some songs that jumped out at me as the perfect couple song like Just a Kiss by Lady Antebellum or At Last by Etta James. I have video game OSTs, music from various anime, J-pop, and K-pop.

I have character playlist in the works I’m still looking for the right songs for everyone. Not to mention the BGM for the communities and overall story. I’m always open for suggestions though!

Conclusion

I could continue on about the creation of the communities, Claire, and more music, but I’ll save that for the next essay. To end this one I’ll talk about some fun I’ve had while making Pleasant Surprise. I didn’t expect to fall so much in love with Bernard. I really didn’t think I would write more stories about him than Adam, though I’m not complaining. He’s a pretty fun guy to have in my head. I didn’t expect the pages of notes I have or that spreadsheet or researching jewelry for each group.

It’s grown beyond my original idea and I love it.

I’m always up for questions and trading anime and music lists. Also for ways to get my characters to be quiet.

As a bonus here’s a few anime I’ve watched and enjoyed:

-DragonBall Z

-Sailor Moon

-CLAMP (Cardcaptor Sakura, X/1999, Tokyo Babylon, if it’s CLAMP I’ve probably watched it)

-Rurouni Kenshin

-Saiyuki

-Naruto

-One Piece

-Bleach

-Gundam wing

-Gravitation

-Revolutionary Girl Utena

Comments

[shipwreck_light]

First of all, I want to take a moment to apologize for /also/ having a Claire in JoR. (Duclos's mother was named Claire because puns in French, but we'll get to that.) Actually, I have other overlaps throughout the comm, but that one's kind of... damnit, she couldn't be less like your Claire if I'd tried.

Man, this made me all nostalgic for late 90's era Shonen Jump sort of stuffs. It's like- now I see where you get your joie de vivre. You were there! You remember!

If you were on the TQML, you and possibly have met before. XD

"Also, Zero could turn into a vacuum..." Not gonna lie. That sounds amazing.

I had a feeling you engineered by couple. And you know what? I think that's cool and not JUST because I couldn't do it to save my life.

[blossomdreams]

I actually named Claire after someone in one of my favorite video games. I loved the name so much that I wanted to write someone with that name.

I was! I used to save my money to get the Shonen Jump that came out in America because broadband wasn't a thing and those MSN groups were a headache. I still have some issues in my room hehe ^^

We might have because I loved Gundam Wing so much omg.

XD I made a joke about sucking and thus Zero as a vacuum was born. (Yes, this is my mind).

Aww thanks whenever I make a character some of them pipe up about wanting someone and then their mate comes. Except for Pandora she really wants someone to talk to without all the relationship stuff, but that's another story for another day. ^_^