A progress update for all of my readers (after which I'll have a few points to make to Kogetsu and Coldlight in particular).
Unfortunately, I've hit a bit of a writer's block.
The good news is that I have the basic plotline of
Mami Lives/Mami Romance Chain planned out in my mind right to the end, probably taking up five more chapters. The bad news is that I'm struggling a bit with the dialogue for it, so that might take awhile to write.
With
Mami Lives/Sayaka Romance, I have some ideas there, and have the basic plotline for that planned out two chapters ahead.
Mami Lives/"No Romance Yet" I'm a bit uncertain of so far, but I have a couple different ideas here. Would my readers mind if I just did a massive time-skip here, and just briefly describe what happens here while the other girls all do their thing with Madoka moping about as the only non-magical girl and with no girlfriends yet?
My current plans for Mami Lives/Homura romance is that the Homura romance likely won't start until AFTER the WN fight anyway.
Canon Route I have some ideas for, and much of it writes itself of course, lol.
Sol has given me much to think about on
Homura/Sayaka Alliance Chain, and I'll be playing through some scenarios in my head for that.
Anyway, this all leads to a few feedback requests I'd like to make of my regular readership, as that might help me break through this writer's block:
1) How much longer, in general, would you like the story to be? With the Mami Lives and Homura/Sayaka Alliance chains, there's no hard and fast rules here at all. With the Canon Narrative, I want to stick to the anime fairly closely, but even here I could skip over quite a few scenes where Madoka is not on camera if that's what people would prefer.
2) What do you hope to see with each romance route? Basically, how elaborate would you like each romance to be? Time constraints will be a factor to some degree of course (Madoka/Mami can go very long, Madoka/Kyouko will have to be at least a bit brief), but I'm wondering how much time you'd like me to spend completely away from action/drama/suspense to simply focus on "yummy Romance" shall we say. 2 Chapters per girl per route sound about right, or would you prefer more or less?
3) I've been thinking of splitting all future Mami Lives Chapters into
three sections instead of the current two. 1 for Mami Romance, 1 for
Sayaka romance, and 1 for "No Romance Yet". The alternative to that would be to stick to the current format (Mami Romance/Mami Friendship) and have lots of split spoiler space sections for parts focusing on MadoSaya and parts focusing on Madoka-no romance. Do my readers have any preference here?
4) How do readers feel about the overall narrative complexity at this point? Too complex, too straightforward, or just right? I'm kind of worried its become too complex (or just too long) since I seem to have lost a few readers since this fanfic began.
Now, to address
Coldlight and
Kogetsu directly - Excellent feedback guys! Both of you have great replies that are very helpful.
As per your replies, I've made the following changes:
1. The first post on this thread now includes an Index. Please check it out and tell me if you find this satisfactory or not.
2. Madoka shooting at Kyouko in one section has been changed to be a grazing blow, and also a shot where Madoka was careful to only use a bit of her power.
3. Jinnai now refers to himself as a "magus". I know that was a concern that both of you had (Kogetsu brought it up to me elsewhere).
Now, Coldlight, I do see the nuanced difference in Sayaka's dialogue that you brought up there. Sayaka seems slightly more mature/serious with the subs you had, and so I might later edit some dialogue there. I think I have Sayaka sounding pretty mature/serious over in Mami Lives, so that might make for a wise edit choice.
You should know, Coldlight, that Kogetsu liked Sayaka having a brief villainous laugh.
Since you're split on that, I'll probably stick with the laugh. I won't have anything else like it though unless Sayaka snaps somehow (such as going into Berserker mode).
Finally, Coldlight, I'm curious to know where you get the bit about Kyubey ruling out wishing people back to life. I honestly don't recall seeing that at all in the anime. Given your wizardry with Madoka Magica screenshots that's second to none, it might be nice if you can show us a specific screenshot pertaining to Kyubey making an
Aladdin's Genie-like claim of "No wishing people back from the dead!".
Anyway, that's all for now. Hopefully my Writer's Block will be over soon. But the good thing about it, is that it probably makes for a good opportunity to take some suggestions from my readers.
There's a few key scenes and scenarios that I want to write for my own enjoyment, I'll admit, but aside from that I just want to write something that's good and will be well-received. So any suggestions you guys want to make, I'm all-ears.