#chaperones

Chaperones! The word for a Permaqueen in BB is a Chaperone.

It is actually a new role, and starts in ThunderClan. It's not too common elsewhere-- though Breezepelt will start to look like one post-AVoS.

Before the Lake, no one made a "role" out of it, raising kittens is communal. Kitchen patrol calls Littlekit over to show them how to skin a mouse, an elder goes for a short walk with Whitekit. You think Smokewing is snoozing, but she has one eye cracked to watch the babies tussle.

But people would still get overwhelmed. Frostfur would have appreciated the role a lot when she was running ragged, raising two older kits, nursing two younger ones, and running the whole Kitchen Patrol.

But, more Traditionalist-leaning cats feel like it's... to put it nicely, like a participation trophy given to outsiders who want to feel like part of a Clan without having "the skills they should." The role is a bit haunted by that association.

"Yeah, Firestar made Daisy the 'chaperone' so she would feel included. I mean, it's nice of him... she couldn't be a warrior or an elder yet, so... I mean it IS nice, y'know, Educators don't help change your bedding."

Thistle Law supporters aren't nice about it. They fully believe it's just a trick to get more useless kittypets into the Clan, "We ALL raise kits, what's wrong with parents being in the nursery? We don't need a job to replace a kitten's Ba."

Man if I ever get a job chaperoning kids, I'm gonna dress up as a knight and they'll all be my princes and princesses, that I happily serve, protect and care for.

It would be SO fun! 😁

Description: Right. Of course. Everyone assumed they were a couple and no one would question it. John put his elbows up on the table so he could rest his head in his hands. “You want to pretend to be a couple so we can chaperone a trip to Disney World with Rosie’s class and you won’t have to share a room with a stranger?” “Exactly.” Sherlock beamed at him. “Don’t worry about the cost. The Birmingham case last month paid more than enough to cover expenses for all three of us.”

Review: Adorable. When John says no to chaperoning Rosie’s class trip, Sherlock steps up. But then encounters a problem with the rooms. This was really cute overall, but the relationship really starts to develop about halfway through the fic. Good length, and (as always) I love Sherlock and Rosie together.

Rating: Teen and Up

Sorry, I put this off for a couple of days to make myself finish my chapter. I could spend all day answering this sort of question. My writing process is kind of a mess, but it (usually) works for me.

(Minor spoilers for my fic Chaperones ahead.)

I usually have some idea of what I’m going to write, but it’s not a detailed outline by a long shot. I probably know the end, at least generally, but not exactly how I’m going to get there other than “things escalate.”  A lot of it becomes clear as I write. For my longer works, I usually have lots of snippets of scenes and dialogue that I have written parts of, and I try to organize them into what might be the right chronological order. Then I start writing, from beginning to end, though I always let myself skip ahead and jot down bits of future scenes when they come to me. I’m almost never starting a new chapter from scratch without at least a little bit of it already written.

For the Disney fic Chaperones, which is one of my more organized fics, I had a small chart that was like an outline, with each of the 7 days listed and a brief summary of events. So for Monday it said: arrive, Share bed first night. Then Tuesday was: Magic Kingdom. Exhausted, some sunburn. Other kid sick? so S is asleep when J returns, tonight or later? J’s shoulders ache. No pm shown.

But I didn’t even stick with that outline, because I did show them when they went to bed that night and I moved the part with John helping other sick kids to the next chapter. So for me, having a detailed outline doesn’t work because a lot changes as I actually write the story. And writing the scenes helps reveal what should happen next because small details I didn’t expect show up and sometimes have a big effect on later events.

Sometimes, I can write a fairly clean draft that goes from beginning to end without needing a lot of editing. This happens most often with short, standalone fic which is one reason I like doing 30 day challenges, because I can produce a greater number of polished words than I normally would in the same timeframe. With anything longer, it’s usually a multi-part process. First I’ll write a very rough draft. Here’s what a few paragraphs of my current chapter looked like in the first draft:

“So when did this whole thing become official?” Rosie waved her hand between the two of them.  

“Er, yesterday. Yesterday morning.”

“Ah. So Leah was right. She said she saw you kissing in Epcot but I thought she was just projecting because she still wants to kiss Mason. Smile!” She raised her phone; the flash () three times before John even realized what she was doing. (One of them shakes his head and makes her take a proper photo?)  

“(ugh) we’re going to have to tell Mycroft, aren’t we?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Sherlock. He already knows.”

“He most certainly does not.”

“Uh, yeah?” Rosie raised her phone, displaying the photo she had snapped earlier. “He follows my Instagram.”

John squinted at (the photo). 163 likes. Well, it looked like they wouldn’t have to worry about how to tell anyone back home (they were together now).

It’s definitely more than just an outline, but if I get stuck on a word or a phrase I’ll skip it, and sometimes I will just summarize the action and fill it in later.

After I get to the end of the chapter, I have a complete story arc but it needs a ton of work. My first editing pass is the biggest one, where I go through and make the chapter into something another person could read and have a fairly clear idea of the story. Here’s that section after this initial editing:

“So when did this whole thing become official?” She waved her hands at the two of them.

“Er, yesterday. Yesterday morning.”

“Ah. So Leah was right. She said she saw you kissing in Epcot but I thought she was just projecting because she still wants to kiss Mason. Smile!” Rosie lifted her phone; the flash had gone off before John even realized what she was doing.  

“Let me see that.” Sherlock let go of John long enough to take Rosie’s phone from her hand. “No. Try again. Take another one.” He stepped close to John again, and they slid their arms around each other’s waists again. John leaned his weight against Sherlock’s side and smiled; the photo turned out much better this time.  

A few seats opened up in the waiting area and John and Sherlock claimed them—once again, Sherlock slid his arm around John as soon as they were sitting. “Are you going to be a snuggler like this at home, too?” John asked. “Not that I mind.”

“Well, Rosie might object if we’re too (mushy), but we’ll have to do it when Mycroft’s around, because he’ll hate it.”

John laughed and then groaned. “Oh, God, I don’t want to be the one who has to tell Mycroft we’re together.”

Rosie turned around from where she’d been talking to her friends. “Don’t worry about Mycroft. He already knows.”

“He most certainly does not,” Sherlock said. (John felt his hand tense where it rested on his shoulder.)

“Yeah, he does.” Rosie raised her phone, displaying the photo she had snapped earlier. “He follows my Instagram.”

John squinted at her phone. The photo had 163 likes. Well, it looked like they wouldn’t have to worry about having to make an announcement to anyone back home.

I might still have a few spots that I’ve marked where I know I want to change something (like the word “mushy”) but all in all it’s not too far from what the final product will be. Next I go back to the beginning and edit again, smoothing out sentences, fiddling with word choices, and making it sound better. I made probably four or five word changes in the section above at this stage.

At that point I usually have the version I send to my beta. When it comes back, I’ll make any changes they suggest. Then I will go through from the beginning, checking for tone and making sure it sounds “Sherlocky.” This is also when I’ll check for my commonly over-used words, like “just” and “still” and check if I have way too many semi-colons or em-dashes, although sometimes I do that earlier. Then, I usually read through it one more time, not paying attention to what the words say so much as looking for typos, missing words, etc. Then I can post. The number of stages of editing overall can vary, up to as many as 8 or so stages, depending on how rough the first draft is. The first example above is not too rough by my standards.