loopy777

Remember when I was called out on TVTropes as one of the greatest ATLA fanfic'ers? Well, my troper fan (Agogobell) has been active again. Now, Retroactive has a page on TVTropes. Granted, it's not much more than a placeholder, but I'm not about to let a whole page devoted to a work of mine languish in obscurity. By the time you read this, I'll probably have added it to the Fanfic index page, and maybe even completed a larger description of the story. I'm going to add as many tropes as I can, but I'm not all that experienced with troping, so hopefully some other people will make their own additions.

This leaves me with a question, though. How much of Retroactive's story is a spoiler? Should I consider anything after the first big twist on Kyoshi Island a spoiler? Or only answers to the mysteries set up by that twist, and subsequent major twists? I'm leaning towards the latter, putting a warning up in the description that going into the story completely cold is the intended method of reading, and the descriptions of the tropes that follow are going to assume that the reader is already familiar with the basic premise as established by the "Faces, Old and New" chapter.

I'd protest that Retroactive probably isn't good or notable enough to get a TVTropes page, but it's definitely a fairly unique effort in ATLA fanfic, and 'How I Became Yours' has a page on that site, so as long as we're promoting the worst the fandom has to offer, why not also acknowledge when one of our own displays a little ambition, eh?

Now I've set myself up to earn a TVTropes page for every single multi-chapter story into which I actually put planning effort. (Note: I create the Mai's Ramblings page myself for fun.) Hopefully I won't screw up my clean sweep at some point in the future. On that note, I should probably bury the idea for that "Sokka and Azula fight Vampire Kyoshi Warriors during a Zombie Apocalypse" story before I embarrass myself.

Sometimes, I like to listen to a piece of music to inspire my writing, getting my head in the right sense of tone and feeling. Unlike most people who use this method, though, I don't like using songs for this, I prefer something without words so that the music itself is what I'm listening to. If I were to take inspiration from the lyrics, I might as well read a book and get something with a more literary voice. But a glorious full orchestra invoking emotion and experience with its sound? Delightful and inspiring.

For "Retroactive," I've been using this method to inspire me with each chapter. I'm trying to have each chapter tell a little mini-story on its own, or at least feel like a natural subset of the overall plot. Because I satisfy my love of orchestra mostly with movie soundtracks (and John Williams in particular), giving each chapter its own musical score is an effective way for me to get in the right mindset.

I figured I'd share my inspirational pieces for the chapters posted thus far. These aren't meant to accompany the chapters, and don't exactly match the events and flow of each chapter, but are more meant to convey the general story and feel.

I held off until now because some of the music used in early chapters is actually SPOILERS for the latest chapter. So yeah, SPOILER WARNING IF YOU'RE NOT CAUGHT UP.

( Warning: contains excessive amounts of orchestra, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, and The Track Team. )
Also, I made a map to help me keep track of location and terrain and stuff that I posted to deviantArt. SPOILERS FOR THE LATEST CHAPTERS in this link.