Why body why

[essbeejay]

Guh. Tired. Got too used to my naps over the weekend. MUST ENDURE.

This week's TEF trivia post for ch3.

“I don’t discriminate based on gender. Does that make me a better person than you?”

• The first chapter title is from Third Eye Blind's A Good Man. The second doesn't come from anything in particular.
• Buttercup caught Butch furtively glancing at her as she swung her way to the nurse's office and suppressed a disgusted scoff. - Originally, the opening to the chapter was longer, and before the boys arrived Buttercup tried to dispel some of the tension by asking Ms. Bellum what had happened to the Mayor. Ms. Bellum basically told her something shiny happened and as a result the Mayor was in the Nurse's Office. She's heading there to pick him up.
• Three-thirty finally rolled around, and she slunk out of the gym to go serve her detention before the final bell could ring, ignoring the walls of busted lockers that flanked her as she made her way down the hall. - Just wanted to say I like this image a lot.
• “'Carême and the Art of French Cuisine,'” she read, wrinkling her face. “A cookbook?” - Made up the book, based it on this French chef. (For the record, I haven't read any of his recipe books.)
• Blossom huffed her agreement. “It's already 80% there anyway.” - Argh! I should've written this number out! IT BUGS THE SHIT OUT OF ME.
• “Except I'm not human,” he instantly responded, pushing through the exit doors. “I'm better.” - Some of you may have caught this; Brick is unaware that he is echoing what Blossom said to Bubbles towards the end of ch1, which is why she gets so unnerved.
• Buttercup saw him drop the pill concealed in his hand into her coffee as he passed over it. - Stupidly full of myself for how I pulled this off, jsyk.
• “You talk about it like we're all tubes of toothpaste,” Buttercup commented. He snorted and looked at her. “But you get what I'm saying, yeah?” - This whole conversation that takes place between Buttercup and Butch over their first few days of detention was largely inspired by this Wired article about Dean Karnazes, who is literally a living human beast. When I first read the article it echoed a lot of the disorganized character traits in my head that I had about Butch (and, to a lesser extent, Buttercup), and it inevitably wound up worming its way into TEF.
• “Oh my God, that reminds me. I gotta pack up my Art sketchbook. We're turning those in for a participation grade tomorrow.” - If you were paying attention this is a setup for what happens at the end of the chapter. Sorta. SHUT UP, I'M A VERY SLY PERSON.
• “Me and my sisters totally tried to hook her up with the Professor once.” - Reference to the S4 ep "Keen on Keane."
• “You even managed to keep your expressions friendly for at least 90% of the dance.” - ARRRRRRGHHHH IT'S LIKE I HAVE SOME DISEASE THAT PREVENTS ME FROM WRITING OUT PERCENTAGES
• “Chill out,” Butch laughed as he picked the locking mechanism. - The internet taught me how to hotwire a motorcycle. Thanks internet!
• “Just around the block,” she caved as she threw one leg over and, after weighing her options, gripped the passenger grab rail. She caught Butch turning to smirk at her and glared. “What?” - You probably caught this, but Butch is smirking because Buttercup doesn't want to put her arms around him to hang on.
• “This guy was doing over a hundred in a forty-mile zone,” one of them explained, waving at Butch. - For the record, I had to ask the s.o. a bunch of questions about motorcycles and top speeds and stuff, because I know basically nothing about this shit.
• “It's lonely at the top,” Blossom agreed, spotting Brick in the distance. “Speak of the devil..." - FOR THE RECORD. This is not foreshadowing. Or... IS IT?! (My lips are sealed! LALALALALA.)
• “That's a book by-oh, fuck it.” Brick sighed and made his way to his room. “Never mind.” - Part of me regrets this bit; it makes Brick sound too intellectual.
• “You've got a real knack for talking to girls, don't you?” Ashley laughed as Boomer plunged a hand into her hair. - Just noticed that "don't you" should be "haven't you." Oops.
• Boomer squinted at her, evidently trying to decide whether or not this was a trick question. “...Yeeeeesss?” he ventured. - This image, in my head, never fails to crack me up. ♥ for Boomer.
• “Bubbles. Did she totally roshambo Boomer or what? I'm talking two consecutive groin attacks, mind you.” - I first heard this term on an early ep of South Park. It has stuck with me to this day.
• “Come, come, Blossom, Alfred will show you to the East Wing; we've a room set aside for you to change in..." - Princess mentions her butler's name is Alfred at least once in the show, itself probably an homage to Batman's butler.
• Next to her, Brick was adjusting his cufflinks-cufflinks, the boy was wearing cufflinks-with a frown. - Guys in cufflinks are hot, if you didn't know.
• She took a deep breath and felt the music pushing her limbs into movement. - The song that always played in my head when I imagined Blossom's solo is Feist's 1234.
• He stared at it all, taking a deep breath to calm his nerves. Nerves. Shit. He should not feel this nervous. - A very interesting thing happened when I was writing Brick waiting to start the Reccardi performance - suddenly I was so overcome with nerves myself, as if I were in his place. I was literally shaking as I wrote this. It was a very surreal experience. Though let it be known I do attribute part of this to being up at 2am and general lack of sleep/water.
• That was it, she realized as she stared up at him, her hand clasped in his and his chest warm against hers. - I fretted for the longest damn time that I rushed this development, that it came out of nowhere and felt unnatural... I still do, in fact.
• “Oh, they really did, didn't they?” Bubbles gushed, eyes glittering. “Like they were born to dance with each other.” “Thank you, Bubbles,” Blossom said through her forced grin, widening her eyes at her sister. “Yes, Bubbles,” Brick intoned through an equally stressed smile, “you're so sweet.” - Love this exchange. Love Bubbles. That is all.
• “Special power. Doesn't have to be a bat.” He swung it back and suddenly it morphed into a sword, and he sliced several monsters cleanly in half. - I took this from the Boys' return ep (Boomer forms a bat at one point) and ran with it. Forgive the liberties I took with his powers!
• “You've gotta have a banker in there somewhere.” Boomer indicated the pile of people she carried. He poked it. “Hey! Any bankers in there?” - In the early draft of this Boomer "picked" the lock himself. mathkid pointed out how ridiculously complicated this would be, so I hemmed and hawed and eventually changed it because mathkid is right about these things. (I did think about making Boomer a lock picker for awhile, but the Boys are overpowered enough as it is.)
• Btw, this whole "action" scene involving Boomer helping? PlayRadioPlay!'s "Even Fairytale Characters Would Be Jealous," one of my definitive Blues songs, is going on in my head.
• A giant monster claw came crashing down, completely obliterating his unnamed Coil into the asphalt. He stopped and stared. - I like that this happened. A lot. That is all.
• Those pink eyes flashed, and then there was a bigger pink flash, and suddenly Butch went flying-though crashing was probably the more appropriate term-into the side of a building. - Also this.
• All Butch could manage was a tinny, “Fuck you.” - Someone said this was a typo and that I'd meant to use "tiny!" BZZZT. It's totally a word, dudes, and my use of it was intentional!
• “Look, it's a bunch of guys getting together and with all the stuff going on and college visits and whatever, it's hard for us to find a day where we can all meet up,” Will fought back, the remorse in his expression fading into irritation. “If it's that important to you, why can't you push your audition back-” - I know we all like to rag on Will, and I did make him do some douchey things, but I think he has a pretty legit response here.
• She stopped midway, fighting the urge to hug him, to pull him close. - In the original draft she actually did hug him. I'm glad I was urged to change it, because it was too much too soon.
• “Auditioning for Lynn, the lead?” - I've been so God damn inconsistent with the spelling of this name. In ch4 I believe I spelled it "Lynne." Consider it from here on out "Lynne," in honor of Lynne Naylor-Reccardi.
• The thought that Will might have shown up when she wasn't looking flickered in her heart, a little beacon of hope, but he was nowhere to be seen. - Don't know about you, but I do this all the time. It never works out the way you want it to.
• Bubbles pressed against Will's side half-heartedly and shrugged, watching the morning school crowd mill about. - Originally this scene took place during lunch, until I remembered that at the beginning of the semester Bubbles had vocally noted she no longer had lunch with Will.
• “Bubbles,” Blossom sighed, “you neglected to mention that this musical I'm helping Dr. Wendell choreograph is about zombies.” - If you haven't guessed by now, zombies are my monster of choice. The zombie genre seems to have a lot more fun and is a lot more willing to poke fun at itself than the other monster movies.
• “No, I'm auditioning for Lynn..." - IT'S LYNNE IT'S LYNNE I SWEAR TO GOD SELF IT'S LYNNE
• Students in rock bands caused him particular ire, as most of them couldn't even name a composer or differentiate between treble and bass clefs. - This was a true phenomena in my high school.
• “Rachmaninoff,” Kim whispered beside her; she'd taken ten years of piano. “That's... that's insane.” - I mention this in the next chapter, but Boomer plays Rachmaninoff's Presto in E minor. If you're familiar with Rachmaninoff, you'll know he had massive hands and played piano like a motherfucking god. He is a badass; I am not kidding. I originally wanted to use his Prelude in G minor, but that one's not as technically demanding, so Presto in E minor it became. (I'm not a giant piano nerd, I barely learned it when I was younger and retained none of it, but it's my favorite classical instrument to listen to.) Bonus trivia: You've probably heard Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini; it's very popular and very beautiful. (Which seems out of character - Rachmaninoff's pieces are always interesting/fun to listen to and dramatic; pretty is just not what jumps to my mind when I think of Rachmaninoff... seriously, I swear I'm not a giant piano nerd. I'm not nerdy enough to have earned that title.)
• “All right,” he said modestly, shooting Bubbles an amused sidelong glance as his hands hovered over the keys. “Here goes nothing.” - Various ideas about the song Boomer played (for Bubbles!) went through my head, including Sara Bareilles' Love Song, but ultimately I settled on Ingrid Michaelson's Little Romance.

These are fun, but they're really exhausting entries to make!

By the way, plugging these on shiegra's behalf - she's got a bunch of dreamwidth codes begging for owners. Just in case anyone's interested, drop her a comment :)