#adverse effect

I posted the new chapter of AE today.

If you haven't read it yet, I would definitely recommend reading it before reading this post.

I just wanted to expound on my thoughts about the chapter a bit. I feel like the reception to this chapter might be a little divisive.

It's no secret that many of us in the Bamon community have some strong feelings about Elena, myself included. I debated how I wanted to approach Elena's involvement in this story and relationship - I had several ideas about it.

Would she stay in the dark and be like, "what the hell is going on?" when dynamics shifted around her? - Kind of fun, but Stefan would probably fill her in eventually, wouldn't he?

If confronted about her stuff with Damon, would she get defensive and upset. - Possibly. It definitely felt like an option to explore, but then I thought seriously about who Elena was early season 2. She felt more grounded and capable of self-reflection then in later seasons.

Do I think her feelings are as neat as she's making them out to be? No, but I definitely think she wants them to be. I know that i'm not interested in demonizing any of the characters, and I'm mindful that, surprisingly, some of my readers are actually Delena fans. I think it's much more interesting to write Elena as a normal girl with the best of intentions, but still having flaws.

ALSO, I wanted to portray the girls as actually being friends. The show did a piss poor job of this, imo, especially since Bonnie was so willing to die for Elena at the drop of a hat. Like, we rarely, if EVER got to see Elena being a good friend to either of the girls, but especially Bonnie.

This year feels like it's just flying by. I've had a pretty eventful past few months. I had a little health scare in late August, but we're getting things sorted and I should be finally finding out what's going on this week.

I also managed to get some contract work - which I've already finished. Super happy about that.

And somehow, with everything going on, I managed to finish the first draft of Chapter 25!

Now it's time for the editing. I do want to look at the first episode of the TV show I'm writing before going back to it. I think the space will help give me better perspective on what works and what needs tweaking, but we're getting close, baby! We're almost at the finish line.

This year feels like it's speeding by already. I'm gearing up for another job at the end of the month, but that will be my last pre-scheduled job of the year which leaves my schedule wide open for writing.

I also did a bit of a skim over the previous chapters - looking at them from a different perspective, which was an interesting experience. I made a few discoveries that will hopefully colour the next chapter (and possibly other chapters moving forward). Nothing too drastic or world changing, but fun to think about.

Also, has anyone else noticed the sheer number of bots on Fanfiction . net? I've gotten countless PMs from "different people" claiming they love (Adverse Effect) and want to work together to create artwork for it over the past month or so. It's clearly a scam, so if anyone else has received a message like that, please ignore it. I think they've written a code to allow the title of someone's work to be inserted into the body of the message and sometimes it adds fake handle information to seem more real.

Happy March everyone!

Sorry for the radio silence in February. The job I was working left very little time to do much of anything. I will say, I usually suffer from insomnia and that definitely wasn't a problem over the past month. I was so tired.😂But now that the contract is finished I should have more time to focus on other things.

My main focus for this month is to work on the first draft of Chapter 25 for AE. I can't believe we're 25 chapters in - I had no idea how long this story was going to be when I first started writing it, but it's exciting to see it rounding out like this.