forum [critique this little snippet i wrote!!]

Started May 27, 2018 by @pallas-athena

tune

EDIT: woaahhh, hey. if you’re reading this, i just wanted to let you know that i wrote the snippet below back in may, and as i write this, it’s august. needless to say, the little snippet below is a horribly outdated example of my writing. feel free to keep reading if you want, but just a note that i’m not really looking for critiques on it anymore.

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hello! so there's this story that i've actually got some motivation to write about (i know, i can't believe it either) and the summary of it is that is a superhero story. it revolves around a band of twelve superheroes, each based off of one of the western zodiacs - i don't believe in astrology, but it's a fun theme to write by!

this passage talks about angela, whose secret identity is the superhero virgo, as she stresses out. this takes place later on in my story, and what's happening is essentially angela, after witnessing some of her fellow superhero teammates go through a lot more physical injury than usual, decides to embark upon a journey of unmasking black cat (the zodiacs' villain/antagonist of the story - there's a reason for black cat's black cat theme, but i'll explain it later ;v;) and getting rid of the villain once and for all so that further damage can be avoided. unfortunately there's literally nothing for her to go off of to even guess what black cat might be like as a civilian, and she also needs to figure out how exactly to get rid of black cat in the first place.

meanwhile, the civilians of the city they protect are getting increasingly annoyed because black cat is growing stronger while the zodiacs aren't, so now there's a lot of damage left after battles and the public is starting to believe that the superheroes are inadequate - ergo, the media is discussing leaking the superheroes' identities and/or just getting rid of them somehow.

as mentioned earlier, this does take place later on in my story, so there's some terms that don't make any sense because at this point in the story you would've already been familiar with them, but i'll try and define them here:
zodiac charm - the thing that allows a zodiac to, well, turn into their superhero form. it takes the form of an innocent accessory (a ring, a bracelet, a necklace - in angela's case, an earring) but it always has the symbol of the zodiac (for example - angela's dangling charm on the earring is virgo's symbol). each zodiac charm is different for every holder!
restoration spell - a spell casted by one of the zodiacs after battle to undone the damage caused by battle. unfortunately, if there's a lot of damage, then the spell isn't able to restore everything (really confusing, I can elaborate on this if you need me to)

okay, here we go!
also?? i don't know how to italicize on here so a // around words (like //this//) indicates that it should be italicized

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Angela chewed on the eraser of her pencil, which was alarmingly small and alarmingly close to disappearing from existence, cut down to just a nub from Angela's sleepless nights - which, as you may have guessed, included a lot of eraser chewing. Instead of chomping down on the plate of perfectly good biscuits in front of her, Angela favored consuming her pencil whole.

Her world had delved into a strange sort of quiet once she had willed herself to unmask Black Cat and reveal the supervillain's identity once and for all - the stakes were higher now, and the Zodiacs had to end this feud quickly. The enemies Black Cat had sent had started to become - much to everybody's displeasure - stronger, and more difficult to get rid of. Angela had kept, on a spare sticky note somewhere, the amount of times she had to team with Gemini to bring a Zodiac to the hospital in the span of a month. Angela lost count and the sticky note itself, too.

The quiet would've been wholeheartedly embraced by Angela if it had came maybe five months prior, with open arms and all that. Now, the quiet was just deeply unsettling. Angela had eventually adapted herself to the fast pace that her life moved at, and to have everything slow down was a genuinely foreign concept to her and therefore, alarming.

But, it didn't take a genius to figure out that it was not a good quiet. It was much like when Mother Nature had finally settled herself after a raucous thunderstorm, but you could still spot the brooding layer of gray in the sky, smoky clouds rolling like soldiers getting into their field positions, ready to fire. There was just a small intermission of temporary quiet before the storms returned loud as ever, hot streaks of silver cutting the sky up accompanied by loud booms announcing the chaos to come.

The aching pain in her wrist became too incessant to ignore. She placed her pencil aside with a hiss of pain and picked up her phone. She resolved to do a quick browse of her news feed to allow her wrist to heal, and then it was back to staring at her notes on Black Cat in abject horror while desperately pleading her brain to //just give her a hint, something, anything-//

Angela never cared for news until that fateful day where a weird earring showed up in her room, its dangling charm the sign for the zodiac Virgo, and spearheaded her superhero career like the first episode of a really bad anime. Now that she had all this additional weight thrown on her, she had to keep herself up to date with anything that happened. Crimes, robberies, anything to make it seem to the public she was a good superhero and that she was already one step ahead of Black Cat's antics and the tricks of small town criminals. If she faltered in her step, reporters would come chasing after her like hungry wolves.

The media //was// hungry wolves - or more like vultures. They took anything they could get and weaved it into elaborate stories that were - at least in Angela's opinion - pretty much always wrong.

Angela scrolled down her news feed and skidded to a halt when she saw that thumbnail for the video that she caused her to nearly pull out her hair just a few hours prior.

//You already know this video'll just make your blood pressure rise and your temper boil, // she told herself. //No need to put yourself into a worse mood.//

She scrolled past the video and within twenty seconds she had scrolled back up and was already pressing the play button.

The reporter, a woman dressed smartly in navy and with a short haircut, held a microphone and was already addressing the question on everybody's lips:

//Do we really need superheroes?//

Angela wanted to scream.
//Of course// this city needed superheroes. Who was gonna show up when Black Cat threw some villain at them that could rewind time, a robot that could control any electrical inanimate object, or some other wacky villain that Black Cat had temporarily used as a pawn? Black Cat wasn't the most creative villain in terms of schemes - seriously, what villain //hadn't// done the good old "sci-fi robot" thing - but everyday civilians weren't equipped to fight and what were the police force going to do? Shoot their tiny guns at a robot with enough metal armor to construct three duplicates of their city's tallest skyscraper?

Angela snorted so loud she was actually afraid she'd woken up her parents.

The reporter continued, noting the recent damage that the Zodiacs couldn't fix - all of Black Cat's little pawns loved to destroy things, and the only way to fix an office building sliced in half was by using the restoration spell. Unfortunately, the Zodiac charms all had limited power and a lot of things to maintain - suit durability, giving their holder the extra strength needed so they wouldn't just pass out after they de-transformed, weapon durability, all those things - and then the restoration spell had to account for civilian injuries, collateral damage, and Zodiac injuries. It wasn't her fault - or any of the superheroes' fault, for that matter - that the first instinct of the civilians in this stupid city when they saw a creature straight out of some comic book series was not to run, but to scream, whip out their smartphones, or point unhelpfully, like everybody else was incapable of seeing that building in the distance collapse.

Angela took a moment to grind her teeth angrily before continuing.

The reporter listed a couple more things - and, Angela had to admit, the reporter was true on the facts of all of them, but the civilians didn't know the superheroes' side of the story. Had they seen Aries spit up blood and struggle to walk while repeatedly rattling off "I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine //I'm fine//-" or felt their heart clench painfully as Leo lay, unmoving, under the bright lights of the hospital room for //the fifth time that week, Jesus Christ,// they might've had sympathy to spare.

The first thing that Angela told herself when she was adding the news feed feature to her browser was that she //didn't care.// All she needed was the basic scoop - where did the crime take place, who was the victim, whatever - so that if reporters shoved a microphone down her throat, she'd be ready to answer, or so that she could tell the other superheroes where they needed to patrol at night to avoid this happening again. The opinions of the writers' of the article or of the reporters themselves could do a backflip off a cliff straight into Hell, for all she cared, because they //didn't matter.// If they hadn't been up here, with Angela - or rather, Virgo - shouting at her to //move, hard left, hard left, the villain's aiming at you,// or darting towards her and rolling her away out of danger, or giving that classical motion of counting down on fingers before they all dived back into the chaos, ready to fight again, then they didn't have a say in whether or not they thought the superheroes were good or bad.

//Their words are lies. They don't matter.//
//Their words are lies. They don't matter.//
//Their words are lies. They don't matter.//
//Their words are lies. They don't matter.//

Instead of registering this helpful statement, her brain instead decided to register the last line in that dumb video, said by the reporter:

//This world would be far better off without any of the Zodiacs.//

Angela had lost sleep over those twelve words, forty-eight letters (yes, she counted). She momentarily stopped paying attention in class - which was, if you had ever met her, was the first thing in Angela's "Don't Ever Do This" list - because of those words. Her sanity was crumbling because of those words.

//This world would be far better off without any of the Zodiacs.//

//Their words are lies. They don't matter.//

It would be so easy. All she had to do convince was the other Zodiacs that these dumb civilians were ingrates and undeserving of their assistance, and then the twelve of them could take a nice break. Angela would recline luxuriously on her sofa, iced tea with a lemon wedge in hand, sipping from the straw while a petty smirk pulled at the corners of her lips as she watched both civilian and policeman scramble as Black Cat's newest pawn - or maybe rook this time - crush a building as easily as rowdy schoolboys crushed soda cans, all from the comfort of her living room TV.

In her hazy imagination, the twelve Zodiacs would appear again to save the day. Then the civilians would realize they were being braindead all along, and they'd apologize on bent knee to the Zodiacs.

Knowing how braindead these people were, though, the only thing they'd be on bent knee for would be to pick up another rock to throw at the Zodiacs while screaming about how their supposed superheroes ditched them in their worst times.

Angela took a moment to scream into her pillow (as quietly as she could, anyway; she couldn't afford to let her parents know she was still up).

Her fingers trembled as she returned to her paper for a reason entirely unrelated to the dull ache of pain in her wrist. Angela breathed in, breathed out, and picked up her pencil while simultaneously exercising a lot of self control so she wouldn't hurl her phone across the room and leave a crack in the wall.

When Angela looked down at her paper, it only added to her continuously growing headache.

What had started as a neat binder full of information she had learned about the Zodiacs had slowly evolved into what looked like a three year old's experimental sketchbook, while her neat handwriting slowly mutated into an undecipherable chicken scratch. Angela had developed the habit of grabbing the binder whenever it was needed, and scribbling down whatever new things she had found out on any random page, completely disregarding the transparent dividers she had put into the binder for better organization.

Angela snuck a glance at the clock on her dresser, completely aware she'd probably break down into tears once she saw the time and completely ready to accept her fate.

It was 2:37 am. On a school night.

(Getting run over by a car sounded pretty nice right now.)

The pencil eraser returned to being chewed on as Angela racked her brain. To be honest, Angela - Virgo - wasn't the bitter cynic in their superhero group - Scorpio (and sometimes Gemini) was. But now, at 2:38 am, with her growing headache, Angela could only think about how Black Cat would kill them all anyway. What was the point? She was fifteen years old, and if the media was actually correct for once, she should be out partying hard in a questionable part of the city at this time, and also drinking questionable substances, too.

She was fairly sure the rest of the Zodiac superheroes were about the same age as her, and so it could be concluded that the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of a band of twelve fifteen year old teenagers.

She was definitely going to die by Black Cat's doing.

//Either that, or I'll die from pencil eraser poisoning,// Angela thought miserably as she chewed off the last of the poor eraser.

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eeeee,,,, critique?? feedback?? comments?? any response is appreciated, and please ask questions!! i don't bite and questions are really helpful, because they also force me to think a bit deeper too ;v;

….
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This was AMAZING
[Quick note: you italicise things by putting asterisks on either side, like * so * (but without the spaces)]
I don't think I even noticed a single mistake (but I'll go up and reread it again, that's a nice excuse to reread it)
… so now that I've enjoyed this amazingness twice, here's two sentences that I think might be a bit confusing:

"The media //was// hungry wolves - or more like vultures. They took anything they could get and weaved it into elaborate stories that were - at least in Angela's opinion - pretty much always wrong."

Should it be "was" or "were"? Not sure about that verb. And is it "weaved" or "wove"? Other than that I literally couldn't find anything
I loved the way you wove (see I think it is wove) the eraser thing through your snippet, it adds so much continuity and just general wonderfulness. Like that is such ingenious writing and I applaud you for it. I didn't even really have any questions because you answered all of them in the text, but it also didn't seem like an exposition dump. The characterisation is on point, I feel like Angela has such a believable internal monologue, very accurate and very relatable. I don't know much about her, but she already seems like a sympathetic character. Is she the protagonist? How are you splitting up the storytelling?
Honestly I wish I could be more useful than just telling you over and over again how wonderful it is

The only questions I have are like questions about the story and what happens and stuff. Like how are you handling writing so many characters at once (I always found that difficult)? What's your general superhero/school balance when it comes to the narrative?
IS BLACK CAT SOMEONE SHE KNOWS IN REAL LIFE?? WHAT IF BLACK CAT IS ACTUALLY A NICE PERSON?? [I've read like a tiny bit and I'm already super invested into this.] (Though that might say more about my speed when it comes to forming emotional attachments to fictional storylines, but idk)
Oh yeah I guess one thing kind of confused me. You mentioned that Leo was in hospital (for the fifth time?). Wouldn't that affect their secret identity though? Like how would they explain that to their parents? Idk it's honestly just a minor nitpick

Anyway (sorry this wasn't really helpful) but I would totally read this book! Heck, I would pay money to read this book!

aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA THANK YOU?? compliments on my writing always make me squeal in delight because look, people like this thing that i (and thanks for helping me do the italics, lmao) made up and pulled out of my trashcan excuse for a brain

yoo, prepare for a long post because i don't know how to be concise

the "was hungry wolves" thing is supposed to be like….interlocked with the sentence before that?? i don't really know how to explain it but angela's internal monologue states that the media would "chase after her like hungry wolves" and then angela decides "nah they aren't just like hungry wolves. they are hungry wolves (or vultures)" essentially. that explanation probably made no sense but i tried

and yeah the weaved thing is wrong. it's wove. i wrote this story at 11 pm on like may 24th (i think that's a thursday?? idk) and then i made this post yesterday at 11:58 pm or sometime around that time. my brain really malfunctions around that time (…..not that it ever works correctly)

i'm so glad to hear that angela is a believable character!! the zodiacs (both civilian and superhero forms) are based off of the zodiac's stereotyped personality, because having those personalities interact with each other would be interesting. virgo is typically stereotyped to be a perfectionist who also really can't stand germs (and anything not clean or organized), and for most of the story, angela fulfills the role of "disappointed mom friend (who secretly cares a lot about her friends)/literally the only mature person". she's viewed as intelligent, organized, down to earth (and she gives good advice!), and she exhibits none of those qualities in this passage because part of my method of showing that literally everything has gone to crap is that angela is doing the things she's previously scolded other characters for doing:

1. not paying attention in class
2. not having a healthy sleeping schedule
3. not being organized (she was disregarding the dividers she put into her binder)
4. terrible handwriting
5. staying up late on school nights

so yep. she's disregarding all of the standards she set up for herself and that's sign #1 that bad things are happening
also, angela is, in fact, not the protagonist! the protagonist of my story is phoebe, who is the zodiac cancer. however, since there's twelve zodiacs, all of them will have a couple of chapters, but since phoebe's the main-ish character, she'll probably have the most chapters. i think this explains the general split of storytelling! I have no idea what i'm doing to do about the school/superhero-ing balance, though….fhhbhdfhjsjshhh

and for handling writing TWELVE characters?? i have about just as much of an idea of how i'm about to go about that as you do.

the first thing i'm really concerned about is uniqueness of each character. the problem with the stereotypes of the signs is that they are obviously not always well defined, and i'm finding this problem to be prominent when it comes to the signs of gemini, scorpio, capricorn, aquarius, and virgo, because they're all stereotyped to be intellectual signs and some of the personality traits that set them apart are already deeply embedded within another zodiac. aquarius is viewed as smart but detached (however, the "dreamy" personality trait is already literally the basis for pisces' entire character because pisceans are viewed to be as such) and capricorn's diligence/determination can be retraced back to taurus. in short, i'm dying.

ANYWAYS

as for black cat, you will see! :3c currently i can say that black cat isn't around angela's age, though. i don't know how you'd handle a supervillain agenda with a highschool homework load because i hear that highschoolers are really suffering (though, i suppose that since they manage superhero agendas, it is possible…)

and i'm so happy to know I've already trapped someone/gotten someone invested because of this passage. welcome to hell, my friend

as for the whole hospital injury thing, angela already knows leo's civilian form and he knows hers (…..because of an accidental reveal involving injuries) but how they explain to their parents is that they were trying to get to safety but whoop, they somehow got caught in the crossfire of the fight and ended up getting injured. that usually passes as an acceptable excuse

if I actually have the characters age in this story (like throughout the book the seasons change and they grow older) then at some point i'm going to have the characters who know the civilian forms of the superheroes work in a bakery together (there's a reason why they're specifically working in a bakery, too - nothing that plot important but it's still somewhat cool) so they can eventually work up the money to pay for hospital visits because you know their parents are gonna get angry and annoyed if their child is delivered to the hospital every other day. i probably will have them age (although it'll be extra suffering for me to keep track of the dates and seasons) because it adds a good effect to the story - if i have a set timeline, then the characters can be all like "i've been with you guys for 2 years….." and it'll add some good sprinkling of Angst(tm) to the story!

wHEW that was a lot of text. there's SO MUCH additional information that i wanted to add but a part of you probably died on the inside when you saw i replied to your post with a post probably the length of a small english essay (then again, oversharing would spoil the story - kind of).

if you actually do want to hear more about the other zodiacs/zodiac civilian selves then just tell me! i absolutely love info dumping on people because i'm pretty anti-social but i love talking about my writing so whenever people are like "yooo, hit me with that unstoppable flood of information about your stupid story" i'm like "YEAAAHHHH HERE WE GOOOOO" [pulls up a powerpoint presentation] if you don't mind spoilers about the story, then i can also info dump information on future characters and other things!
and thanks again for both responding, and your compliments ;v; !!

Are you kidding? When I saw that you had given me a "short-essay-length" response a part of me woke up from its braindead slumber just to squeal in happiness and then I read it like three times
(Before I go any further can I just say that you are hilarious and your humour gives me life like "trashcan excuse for a brain" that is comedy gold)
So anyway
You know how I was like "your writing is so ingenious"? Well guess what I knew nothing, because your writing is even MORE ingenious than I first assumed
That thing with Angela disregarding her own standards is just…. I can't even that's like something a Lit professor would pull out of a book because it's just aaaaaah (I can't form coherent sentences either, but rest assured that yes I am very impressed)
Yeah twelve characters seems daunting but at the same time it's so amazing to me that you're pushing the boundaries of what you're comfortable with as a writer because that's how growth works (cut to me who hasn't had more than 3 characters interacting in a scene for like… millennia at this point) (that's bad don't do that)
And just… it's so intricate the way you set up your characters and their personalities, like the whole zodiac thing is a lot more complex than I imagined at first (the only exposure I have to those stereotypes is random tumblr posts where it's like "the signs in this situation" or whatever so your explanation was much appreciated)
Honestly I think high schoolers are quite likely to have a villain agenda because we're also dead inside. Sort of along the lines of "I have homework BUT THE TEACHER CAN'T ASK FOR IT IF THE SCHOOL WAS OBLITERATED BY KILLER PENGUIN ROBOTS"
But at the same time some high schoolers also still have hope in humanity so you make an excellent point when you say they'd turn to heroism
YES for Angst ™

TELL ME EVERYTHING
Pull up your powerpoint presentation, I'll grab a chair and stuff to take notes because I am fascinated by your story
Like I am down for whatever info dump you choose to bestow on me
(Spoilers are fine)

How long have you been planning this?? You mentioned that you wrote it like 4 days ago or something but I can't imagine that something so intricate could just be an off "oh, hey, let me write this at like 11:58 pm"
How long do you think the book will be?
(This is probably way off and I'm reading into things, but it seems like the name "Angela" really fits the Virgo theme (because angels). So I'm actually pathetically curious as to how you're picking civilian identity names)
Do they all go to the same school/actually know each other in real life or are they just random folks who banded together? How did they find each other and become the zodiacs?

(Sorry again, btw, you were probably hoping for someone who's actually helpful and asks interesting questions and stuff but noooo you got me who's just…. idk what even) (but yeah I'm definitely up for story-related information)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE i can't believe i found someone who actually likes it when i post a small english essay for them to read. what kind of sorcery…..you're going to regret this decision of deciding to listen to me scream about constellations

thanks for the compliment on my humor!! also that "trashcan excuse for a brain" is probably as good as my humor gets, honestly

and yooOO HERE COMES THE UNSTOPPABLE FLOOD OF INFORMATION. GRAB YOUR LIFE JACKETS, KIDS, AND RING UP YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY BECAUSE HOUSES AND ENTIRE BUILDINGS WILL BE FLOODED

i could totally see a highschooler being a supervillain because i'm gonna be real: if i was a supervillain, i'd probably destroy the school first so i could get some off days, and having a highschool be the supervillain could lead to some pretty good comedic situations. currently i'm rolling with what I have right now, with black cat not being highschool aged, but i never actually considered having black cat being an actual classmate, so maybe i'll look into that sometime in case my plans change!

all of the superheroes are currently aged at fifteen, and since i'm not even fifteen yet and i make "i'm dead inside" jokes 24/7, you know that somewhere along the line they'll complain about these duties that have been assigned to them. i do want to make them believable, so one function i've added in is a chatroom for the superheroes, which i think will really help the characters actually resonate with my audience.

before you confusedly ask me why the superheroes are gonna have a chatroom, let me explain!
okay, so i was thinking each of the heroes would have like some compact thing that allows them to communicate. it has an emergency communication channel where the superheroes can converse with one another, and tell each other where to patrol or whatever. it's strictly emergency only (as virgo always says) but like, let's be real. these are fifteen year old teenagers. there's no way they won't repurpose that "emergency communication channel" into like a discord chatroom or something. i'm never getting rid of this idea because i've literally already written out conversations they have with each other in the chatroom even though my plot isn't fully developed. my priorities are so misplaced

the lil communicator thing is called a holoscope!
holo = as in hologram. on default settings it doesn't use holograms, but go to your settings and turn it on "hologram mode" and an enlarged keyboard and version of the communicator's screen will pop-up as holograms! pro: bigger keyboard. con: everybody around you can see that you're posting memes in the superhero group chatroom, while virgo's yelling at you (just kidding, they can't import pictures into the chatroom)
scope = stands for horoscope. i thought i was pretty clever with the hologram + horoscope combo

okay, moving on!
the idea first spawned back in mid-december of 2017 (so like….december 16th, maybe?). it didn't get written down anywhere at all, and i kind of just toyed around with the characters in my head. i eventually did start writing it down, but my version of "writing it down" at that time was just astrology links and wikipedia links i stored in my notes, along with zodiac and greek mythology facts, character outlines, how the technical parts of their superhero suit (like the holoscope) works, etc, and not actual chunks of the story, if you get what i mean.

how long will the book be?? uhhh….i'll get back to you on that like never. i have no idea, honestly

AWWW YEAAHHHH, NAMING CHARACTERS!! it's fun and it also simultaneously condemns me to hell :) :) :)
i haven't worked out all of the names yet, but i'll list the ones i do have done - these aren't super deep, but here we go!
the one thing i try to be consistent about is that the names do relate to the zodiac, but are subtle. like for libra i could just name her themis (the greek titan of court, law, order, etc) but that's way too obvious of a reference for my liking.

also, i went way overboard and i ended up including a ton of extra information on each sign. i hope you like reading because you're gonna have to

aries:

• edith, meaning "battle" or "prosperous in war."
• aries is literally pronounced the same way as ares, the greek god of war
• aries's ruling planet/guardian star is mars, the roman counterpart of ares and the roman god of war (what a surprise…)

taurus:

• i was thinking of casper for his name! casper means "treasurer".
• taurus rules the second astrological house - the latin motto is lucrum, meaning wealth, and the modern title for it is "house of value", associated with money, material things, property, cultivation and growth, etc….
• guess what a treasurer does?
• they manage finances. you can see how that kind of relates

gemini:

• whoop whoop, guess what?? the gemini zodiac charm is actually managed by two people!
• a boy and a girl who are….you guessed it….twins.
• girl = really happy and upbeat, probably has her room decorated with wonderfully made crafts from pinterest
• boy = about a half a step away from killing someone
• but don't worry, he's aloof but he loves his sister and he (probably) wouldn't kill someone
• unfortunately, i don't really have any name ideas for them - the girl's name needs to begin with pol- (as in, pollux, the brightest star of the gemini constellation, or as in polydeuces, the twin brother of kastor in greek myth) and the boy's name needs to begin with cas- or kas- (as in, castor, the second brightest star of the gemini constellation or kastor, twin brother of polydeuces in greek myth)
• i was thinking casey for the boy because it does mean vigilante/watchful, but then we've got casper and casey and the names sound too similar for my liking, tbh. as for the girl, the only pol- name i could think of would be polly but i'm sure there's a better sounding name??
• also this is unrelated but the boy, when transformed (into superhero gemini), has an outfit with a blue colour palette while the girl when transformed has a red colour palette outfit. this is because pollux (the star that the girl embodies) is an orange hued giant star, while castor is a blue-white giant, further reflecting gemini's duality! and in civilian form they have those palettes, too.
• in case you're wondering how the superhero gang gets around this, they just refer to the female twin as "girl gemini" and the male twin as "boy gemini".

cancer:

• her name is phoebe! it means "bright" and "shining", and is also associated with the moon.
• take a wild guess at what rules the zodiac cancer
• it's the moon.

leo:

• i'm thinking about considering adrien, meaning "sea" or "water"
• "but royaltea," you scream, "leo is ruled by the sun!" (which, you know, a literal flaming ball of fire).
• this is gonna be so hard to explain, but here: leo and cancer (or adrien and phoebe) are the mothership of my story (as in, they are the Main Ship™). the only reason why i chose them as the couple is because of their ruling stars - sun and moon, respectively. civilian leo has a name meaning something typically associated with the moon (water) and civilian cancer has a name meaning something typically associated with the sun (light) because even though they're opposites, they're still connected to the other in a way.
• and their names also serve another purpose: if i make adrien's last name start with m, and phoebe's last name also start with m, then their intitials will be A.M and P.M respectively
• dO YOU SEE WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO?? A.M AND P.M?? i don't know, i thought that was really really cute. it's so useless in terms of plot but i'm keeping it

virgo:

• angela! meaning "angel"
• and you figured it out already, basically. virgo's symbol is a virgin, but that's pretty hard to represent (at least, imo) but virgins are associated with purity and whatever
• you know what else is associated with purity??
• angels

libra:

• i have no ideas, but let's take a look at our options:
• i want libra (civilian and superhero) to reference lady justice, because libra's symbol is the scales, which typically in itself symbolizes law and order
• i'm considering moira - the name means "destiny, fate" and in a way, i suppose justice does have something to do with destiny?? or, aletia - meaning truth, and truth is pretty important to justice, i guess?? or, irene, meaning peace. i don't know anymore
• something like freya might work too (she was a norse goddess who ruled love along with a lot of other things) because libra's ruling planet is venus, the roman goddess of love, but i think focusing on the divine law and order aspect of libra is way more interesting (libra's relationship with the goddess of love will be tied in through a different method, though :3c)
• also unrelated but civilian libra wears glasses because lady justice wears a blindfold. both, without context, indicate impaired vision (the blindfold actually represents impartiality to the circumstances in the case of lady justice but shh)
• civilian libra has a little sister, and even though that's not super related to the topic at hand, i'll talk about civilian libra's little sister real quick:
• her name is prue and she's the typical quiet, slightly odd little girl. i'm thinking of making her around 8 years old
• lady justice frequently appears with prudentia, the personification of prudence, at her side; prudence basically means the ability to plan ahead, or foresight.
• guess what prue means? prudence. civilian libra's little sister, prue, represents prudentia while civilian libra represents lady justice.
• one reoccurring event i plan to have happen is for one of the zodiac superheroes to stumble upon prue, and they're like "oh, a little kid!" and they just talk to her. at some point prue'll say some real ominous (i love me some good foreshadowing) stuff and the zodiac will be like "what do you mean?" and then prue will offer the zodiac something seemingly meaningless and/or useless, like a rock with a hole in it or something, and is like "you'll need this!" and the zodiac is like "…..thanks??" (because when a kid gives you a gift you don't just turn it down, you heartless monster) then leaves with the item. turns out later that useless item becomes vitally crucial
• also, prue has a pet snake in her room because prudentia appears with a snake and a mirror pretty often. i'll do something about that mirror item later, though, because i have no ideas right now

scorpio:

• octavia - meaning eighth! her middle name is anastasia, meaning resurrection or rebirth.
• guess which sign is the eighth sign? scorpio.
• scorpio is the ruler of the eighth astrological house. the latin motto for the eighth house is mors, meaning death, and the modern title for it is the house of reincarnation.
• scorpio's traditional symbol is a scorpion (duh) but it's also associated with the eagle and the phoenix, which is literally a bird that dies and rises from its own ashes (coUGHCOUGH anastasia means resurrection and rebirth)
• i have no idea for octavia's last name, but her name so far should technically mean "eighth rebirth (or resurrection)". i'd honestly love to do something with that but i don't know what,,,
• interestingly enough, aries rules the first house, which has the latin motto of vita, meaning life (ironic, because aries is associated with war), so i'm thinking i should do something with aries and scorpio…..
• also, octavia/her family has three dogs (two male, one female, but i'm not sure of the breed yet) - they're named ceru, berkeley, and uschi!
• ceru berkeley uschi
• together, they represent cerberus, the hound of the underworld. i think you understand what i'm getting at here,,,
• i've read nowhere that this titan is actually even related to scorpio/pluto, but there's this greek titan called iapetus! he is the titan of mortality and human life span (…..aka, death) and his name is literally derived from iapto, meaning pierce/wound. Iapetus had four sons: prometheus, epimetheus, atlas, and menoetius.
• i remember i read somewhere that iapetus's sons could represent the worst faults of humanity: prometheus: crafty scheming, epimethus: stupidity, atlas: excessive daring/recklessness, menoetius: cruelty/thoughtless violence
• this would probably be a good opportunity for me to give octavia four really, really annoying cousins who are based off of each of iapetus's sons
• i thought this would be a good idea, but at the same time i don't really want to give connections to things that aren't that related. the only relation i could see the horoscope zodiac being related to iapetus is the fact that scorpio's ruling planet is pluto, god of the underworld, and iapetus is the titan of mortality. otherwise, there's nothing
• something for me to consider, though!

sagittarius:

• i'm so sorry but i have absolutely no idea because i haven't looked too far into this sign…….i think a name meaning "journey", "adventurous", or "pioneer" would work, because sagittarius rules the ninth astrological house, whose latin motto is iter (journeys) and modern title is the house of philosophy.
• alternatively, sagittarius's ruling planet is jupiter, whose greek counterpart is zeus, the king of the gods. reagan is, i believe, a unisex name that means "little king", "sovereign", or "the king's child", so that could also possibly work! i don't like it that much for sagi, though (i just don't think it fits ;v; )
• civilian Sagittarius will be chinese, so i also need to figure out a Chinese name for them, too (….and also their gender, lmao) there's a reason why they're chinese that i'll explain later, ay
• speaking of which, i really, really, really need to decide on some nationalities for the rest of the signs.

capricorn:

• uhhhhhhHHHHH
• i…also…didn't…really…focus…on…this…sign…help
• capricorn rules the tenth astrological house, whose latin motto is regnum, meaning kingdom, and its modern title is the house of social status, so the name reagan can be applied to this sign, too!
• capricorn's ruling planet is saturn, the roman god of time. i have no idea what to do with this information, though
• clocks do remind me of antique stuff, though, so maybe civilian capricorn is a really good engineer and/or enjoys collecting antiques.

aquarius:

• [uhhhhhhHHHHH intensifies]
• i mean?? it rules the eleventh astrological house of friendship?? and it's also ruled by uranus, the god of the sky
• that's….literally it. i don't know anything else about aquarius. i'm a terrible person

pisces:

• i was considering lorelei, which means "beautiful siren that lures men to their deaths" (it literally does), so that's fun, but maybe a bit too violent
• i kind of associate pisces with mermaids, who are typically associated with pretty voices, so the name calliope (one of the nine muses, i believe, and also her name literally means "beautiful-voiced"). the problem with that is that apparently calliope either had kids with ares (so, aries) or apollo (so, basically leo) but like….that's obviously not how my story is going to go, and it feels kind of weird to abandon that part of calliope because i went way too in depth with other signs like scorpio

wOW THAT WAS A LOT OF TEXT. i think my wrist just snapped off from the rest of my arm

anyways, all twelve of the signs do know each other, and they go to the same school!
as for how they find each other: via the zodiac keeper, but mostly through their own zodiac charms. the shortest way i can summarize the beginning of the book (not the prologue) is that it's a new school year (cliché, i know,,,)!! and phoebe's chilling out in class, half not paying attention while slightly stressing out over the upcoming year, and everything is completely nor- yoOOO IS THAT A GIANT ROBOT THING BREAKING THE ROOF?? after that, some weird crap occurs and when phoebe makes it home, there's a weird little box on her desk and more weird crap occurs and phoebe soon finds herself, as a superhero, on a roof with ten other equally confused and unlucky teenagers, along with one teenager who apparently perfectly understands what's happening. it's more in depth than that but my wrist hurts so

the zodiac keeper is just this person who manages the twelve zodiac charms and keeps an eye on things from the sidelines, and the zodiacs aren't really even aware the zodiac keeper exists until a little while later.

i'm gonna stop here. there's more lore and other crap that i wanted to add in (…..there's the eastern/chinese zodiacs, which also play a part in the story) but i think the polite and normal person thing to do is to let your conversation partner absorb the essay you wrote first.

i was scrolling up to reread your post real quick and i noticed that when you were inquiring about angela's name, you said something along the lines of "i'm probably just reading into things" and i just. find that really hilarious because you're over here like "oh, angela's name actually fits the virgo theme kind of well but maybe i'm just slightly overthinking…." and then i come in and hit you over the head with this essay-size in-depth read into the civilian names i picked for them like "NO. NO THAT'S 100% INTENDED THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN"

my absolute favourite thing in a story is when the authors scatter little details, so i'm trying to put that into my story, too, but half of it is just overthinking, whoops. anyways, hopefully there's no typos in here

LIFE JACKET HAS BEEN PUT ON Á LA AIRPLANE SAFETY VIDEOS.
INSURANCE HAS BEEN CALLED AND DAMAGES PREPARED FOR
LET’S DO THIS

1. Chatroom idea - brilliant. 'Nuff said.
2. Holoscope - ingenious.
3. Honestly that technical research phase of the story is where I usually get stuck and give up. So here's a double thumbs up for getting past that!
4. Naming characters - YES ALL OF THIS IS JUST BRILLIANT
   SO INTRICATE
   Few notes (idk I'm not actually implying that you should use any of my "suggestions", I guess you could consider this more like a platform for new ideas like "oh hey, that's a new angle (or not new, you seem like you've thought this out pretty well) but anyway what I'm trying to [awkwardly] say is that I'm in no way trying to tell you what to do with your story)
   • Gemini:
     Only female "Pol" name I could think of right away was Polaris, but if you're going for the sound as opposed to the spelling you could venture into the "Paula" territory
     Only male name in that area I could think of was Cassius/Kassius (or Cassis but that's not really a name it's the German word for blackcurrant)
   • I know absolutely nothing about Adrien and Phoebe BUT I SHIP IT
     ESPECIALLY bc that AM/PM stuff is just adorable
   • The Prue idea is honestly one of the best ideas ever, that's just… genius I can't even
   • CERBERUS
   • JUST… CERBERUS THAT IS SO CLEVER
   • Capricorn honestly makes me think of the "Inkheart" series and not much else (idk why I felt the need to share that with you but now you know)
   • Uranus. (One day I will be able to look at that word without laughing)
5. Your description was just the best ("weird crap")
6. Suddenly I'm really intrigued by this zodiac keeper person because that raises so many questions to me like how much do they know?? How much power do they have??? Could they, for example, take away someone's zodiac powers if that person was abusing them?? (That would raise a really interesting plot point if, for example, one of the zodiacs cracked and gave up and stuff) (idk but this zodiac keeper man, I feel like they're a lot more important than you let on (OR NOT) (THAT WORKS TOO) (I OVERANALYSE EVERYTHING)
7. Little scattered details give me life
8. There is no such thing as "just" overthinking every bit of thinking makes the reader happy (or, well, me as a reader I can't speak for other people)

Woo okay anyway
I guess any questions I do have left are mainly about the plot and how everything works and arcs and stuff and I guess that would be tedious for you to write out.
Oh yes one more thing you mentioned Eastern zodiac and I got kind of happy because there was actually (NERD ALERT EVERYONE GET DOWN) an anime about the zodiac branches. Like the whole story with the mouse, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, wild boar (and cat if we're being… technical…)
HOLD UP IS THAT WHERE THE BLACK CAT THING COMES FROM??? BECAUSE THE CAT WAS EXCLUDED FROM THE ZODIAC IN EASTERN LORE AND WAS ANGRY AND STUFF???? AAAAAAAAAaaah watch when that's totally wrong
Anyway
The anime/manga was really cute and stuff (Fruits Basket, idk if you're into that sort of thing) so that was exciting to me that you might add in some of those elements

(I don't know, again, why I felt the need to share that with you but there you go)

aaaaAAAA (this'll probably be how i begin all my responses lmaoooo)

i'm too lazy to respond to evERYTHING, but thank you ;v; !! i'm so happy to know that you enjoy all of this overthinking i put into the civilian names…..and tbh, polaris is actually a cute name!! and i'm also happy to know that i've made someone ship adrien & phoebe all because of their initials. that's the power of the ship

prue is actually one of my favourite ideas i've come up with, and all i need to do is figure out how a zodiac's first encounter with prue will go and which zodiac will have that encounter. i think it would be a better idea for one sign to go consistently and maybe have other signs stumble upon prue once or twice, but having only one sign go would allow for a bond to establish between prue and that sign. cancer/phoebe would actually be a good choice for this - i did plan that civilian libra would be best friends with phoebe, sooooOOOOO-

and cerberus, ayyy!!! i wanted all of the dogs to be male (because i think cerberus is usually depicted as male) but i couldn't find any good male dog names that started with "us", so i opted for "uschi", which is a female dog name. later on i'll try and think of what breed the dogs should be

while we're talking about uranus, i should tell you that we had an astronomy unit in science a while ago (tbh it was kind of useless, i didn't learn anything - either i know too much about space or my school needs to up their game) and obviously that included the solar system. everybody in my class made uranus jokes and i was 100% ready to embrace death

also, thank you. i am a very good describer (is that even a word)

moooOOOVVVVIINNNGGGG OONNNN

the zodiac keeper is pretty important! she's got the biggest connection with angela, who asks the ZK (that's what i'm referring the zodiac keeper to as now) for background information once angie discovers ZK's existence. i'm thinking that angie will realize that the ZK exists through some books, but i also need to plan out exactly how angie will know where to go to find the ZK.

i do think that the ZK can revoke zodiac charms once the holders are corrupt/evil or if they're just no longer fit for the role of a hero (that doesn't necessarily only mean becoming evil - maybe the holder went through some heartbreak, is really mentally unstable, and just can't handle the responsibility, or they've got serious permanent bodily injury). whatever the reason, the charm will go to a new holder.

most of the time, the ZK won't just forcibly take the charm away and will instead try and coax the holder they see unfit to turn it in themselves. it's possible for a holder to give up their charm! now you're probably wondering "yo, doesn't that mean that the holders could just ditch their responsibilities in a flash?"

technically, yes! the only thing is that they don't know that they can give up the charm and they don't know that the ZK exists. so when they get that charm they're like "i guess this is my life now". over time you bond with your fellow superheroes, and by the time they do discover they can give up their charm, most of them don't want to anymore.

yeeAHHHH that's where black cat's theme comes from!! in the eastern lore, the cat kind of got lied to by the rat, and apparently that's why today cats try to kill rats on sight. and i've heard of fruits basket but i neVER KNEW IT WAS ZODIAC-BASED??? DAMN. i thought it was gonna be some stereotypical highschool love story thing from the title and that's why i never looked into it (ironic because i'm literally writing a stereotypical highschool love story within this story)

right now i don't really know what to talk about (and that's probably a lil disappointing for you b/c i think you were hoping i'd elaborate on stuff)
but i've got four major topics i can think of, so choose one! i'll eventually talk about all of them but just choose which one you're interested in hearing first, lmao:

1. the actual plot
2. eastern zodiac superheroes
3. zodiac/civilian personalities & relationships with one another
4. how the whole superhero thing works (e.g. how they turn into their superhero form, how they use their spells)

also, this story does have a title! it probably won't be the final title, but the title i was considering is "stars in transition".

aaaaaaAAAAA?

• It is quite possible that you know to much about space and your school needs to up their game
• Sorry for bringing up bad uranus-related memories I guess
• Boooks
  That's intriguing
  Does that mean that there's like a history of zodiac superheroes and some have taken the time to write down an instruction manual? Or does she extrapolate from lore and think, oh, this is a thing in mythology so maybe we have a thing that's similar in our situation?
  Idk
  I'm still really intrigued by the ZK concept though. Like if the zodiac charms can be passed on does that mean the ZK role is passed on too or is it just the same person for all eternity who's just like "well idk but these kids seem like they've got their act together"
  Btw, does the ZK decide who the charms go to? If so, on what basis does she give them out? Does she have a reason to give them to teenagers over any other demographic? (not that that's a problem, but I guess some adults don't have the most… optimistic view of us and our capabilities?) (I kid you not, one time we got a required reading book in Middle School and it defined the word "puppies" in the glossary like ok yes so silly of me to forget that everyone under 20 has to be dumb as rocks)
• To be fair, Fruits Basket is kind of a highschool love story thing but there are some pretty dark elements, especially related to the zodiac (in this case, it manifests as a "curse" which basically makes everyone's life difficult and angsty). The love aspect was bearable because I really like the characterisation, I find them so random and extra that I can handle the clichés, but I dunno
  I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea
  On another note the cat/rat relationship in FB is goals for writing complex relationships (though not at first glance)
• Stars in Transition
  …. because zodiac… aand they…. AAAH I get it! That's pretty cool!
  (honestly I'm just impressed that you can even think of a title at this point, my titles generally are based off of the word "thingo") (I'm just constantly in awe that you just like… write stuff??? and it's good?? and you think of titles?? and you actually get stuff done??? like what is this sorcery)
• All of your topics sound really interesting! But if I had to choose something to hear about first I guess either 3 or 1? Idk whatever you feel like writing down I am willing to read and obsess over

[aaaaAAAAAA intensifies]

i'm gonna skip straight to the zodiacal stuff b/c i'm lazy

• yeah, there's a history of zodiac superheroes! there's a western set of zodiac charms and an eastern set. when trouble arises in the western side of the world, the western charms are sent out, and when trouble arises in the eastern side of the world, the eastern charms are sent out. the western set is the aries, taurus, gemini, etc etc and the eastern set is the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit (so basically, the chinese zodiac!) there's other types of zodiac sets - i think there's a celtic one and some countries surrounding china have their own version, but the western + chinese are the most well-known so that's what i'm going with.
• i actually had this idea planned where i went for the cliché "villain seizes control of hero and temporarily turns them evil" thing, which i'm not quite sure on but if it does happen, it'll happen to all twelve of the zodiac heroes. anyways, when black cat seizes control of capricorn, capricorn's new powers are that he has a clock he can rewind to turn back time (capricorn is ruled by saturn, the god of time) - on accident, aries breaks it while trying to fight him and the clock malfunctions and begins to randomly teleport the gang to the times of past zodiac superheroes. i thought it would be the perfect way for me to showcase past superheroes but that means i have to a) use a really overused plot and b) actually do research on history. [sobs in corner]
• i never even considered the idea of past superheroes keeping like…..a diary of their experiences. maybe angie stumbles upon some zodiac's diary, reads it, finds out about the ZK, and starts hunting them down. or, to allow me to be the lazy person i am, i could make it so that angie stumbles upon the ZK by accident and the ZK obviously knows that angie = virgo and the ZK says some ominous stuff about angie's secret identity/implies that they know about her secret identity which angie finds Very Suspicious™ and she goes back to find the ZK (maybe the ZK runs a café or something. just cos they manage the most powerful artifacts in the universe doesn't mean they can get away with tax evasion, you know - fun fact, that "tax evasion" line i just said is based off an actual line in my story). and blah blah blah wooooAHHHHH THE ZK EXISTS
• i was thinking that yes, the ZK role is passed on! i'm not quite sure if i want the ZK to be female or male - i previously referred to her as female but now i don't know. i was thinking of making her an old lady or smth?? or just older aged because every story needs the Stereotypical Wise Old Person™. i'm so unoriginal
• i actually i have no idea whether the charms are just semi-sentient themselves (like they're infused with a piece of the zodiac deity's soul or whatever) and just find their new holder or if the ZK makes that decision. i had this idea that each set of zodiac superheroes are actually the reincarnated original zodiac deities, and so they carry some piece of the zodiac deity's soul and naturally the zodiac charms are attracted to them. the only problem with this story-wise is that it'd essentially mean that once the holder died, you could literally never replace them until this generation of zodiac superheroes either dies, succeeds, or just gives up and that'd probably be a problem. i'm not planning for any character deaths but past holders have definitely died so
• the zodiac deities are essentially gods/goddesses who first made the charms, and everything magical about the charm (the superhero suit, the weapons, etc) are maintained by that zodiac deity's magic. this is probably so confusing and you're free to ask questions but prepare for the Disappointment™ because i barely know enough of this concept myself. this topic about zodiac deities mostly relates to topic #4, about how the suits/magic work n whatever so yeah
• also here's something totally useless i've decided: each generation of zodiac superheroes/each set of zodiac superheroes is called a wheel of zodiac superheroes or literally just a wheel. so in sentences like "do you really think this wheel of zodiacs is up to the challenge?", "let's hope this wheel is more successful than previous ones", just replace "wheel" with "generation" and then that's basically what wheel means. get it? wheel? wheel of zodiacs?? zodiac wheel? i'm so clever.
• oof i need to check out fruits basket……

OK HERE COMES THE PLOT
and it's really underdeveloped. like i know what edith's favourite movie genre is (it's horror, and as a quick reminder, edith is the zodiac aries) but i don't know one of the most important aspects of a book. run me over with a train :)

• here's the planned first sentence after the prologue: "No matter how hard Phoebe tried to convince herself, it was apparent that the giant robot was not a hallucination produced out of last night's lack of sleep."
• lol what
• oh, yeah, apparently we're in seattle now? i want this story to be set in america but i'm not quite sure where in america, so seattle's my placeholder city for now.
• i was thinking that perhaps the story part after the prologue would be about cancer and the gang fighting the robot thing, so that way it would be like the charms were already assigned before the story and all of the zodiacs have already gotten used to one another. that would be much easier for me, because it would spare me the pain of trying to introduce twelve characters without making it seem forced; that's kind of the route i'm actually considering going, but the other problem with that is that at some point i'll need a giant monologue/paragraph that introduces everything properly. the pro of the alternate beginning where phoebe and the others just got their charms is that the reader is kind of learning the ropes along with the characters.
• okay you probably just want the plot straight on, not my rambling
• let's just skip straight to the parts where they actually got used to each other
• most of the drama/angst happens in the later half of the story, and the first half of the story is just some good old school chaos mixed in with superhero chaos and a lot of weird chatroom conversations. there's a lot of other things that happen - e.g the eastern zodiacs (or, at least, six of them) come to visit at some point, but i'm assuming you just want the plot and not any other details or insignificant events.
• so, one of the main plot points is that one of the zodiacs (i'm not quite sure which yet) is missing an important family member; namely, their mom. (lol smell the cliche)
• the latter half of the story is kicked off when angela begins to realize how much higher the stakes are getting, and she mostly notices this through the fact that most of their enemies are beginning to do more collateral damage & whatever, and so the restoration spell uses up most of its magic to restore buildings and not enough to restore the zodiacs' health after they get injured.
• angela, being the Responsible Friend, takes it upon herself to start doing some good old book hunting in some various libraries and begins to try and take notes and connect the dots on how to get rid of black cat
• she knows from a previous encounter with BC that yanking off the black cat charm doesn't work. like, it literally does not come off, while the zodiac charms, when yanked off their (transformed) holder, will cause their holder to lose their transformation
• so put two and two together and bam: you probably gotta do some weird crap to unbind the charm from BC
• this whole "how the hell do we get rid of BC" arc/epoch takes up a lot of what i like to call the "everything's gone to hell" epoch, which is essentially the period in the book where things, as the name implies, goes to hell.
• zodiacs are getting injured, angela's completely forgetting to eat and do normal people things like sleeping and going outside all because she's putting in days and nights to search libraries; hence, virgo can barely fight because she's so tired and so the zodiac team basically loses their backbone.
• at this point, a couple of the zodiacs have already found out about each other's identities (albeit, by accident); these four zodiacs are leo, virgo, scorpio, taurus, and maybe one more other sign! they help each other out and offer moral support
• everyone's feeling pretty miserable, and so the teamwork that originally binded the zodiacs together is falling apart. there's fights and a metric heckton of general chaos
• meanwhile, the public is getting annoyed that their esteemed superheroes are becoming weaker; it takes them longer to get to fights and so that means more people are in danger and more things are destroyed
• media accuses them of being no better than the criminals they fight because they aren't able to unmask themselves, and then there's the whole "how can we trust them if they cannot reveal their identities? we have no proof that the people under the mask are any better than the criminals who endanger our city"
• people start to want to get rid of them, etc etc
• everything's terrible.
• during this time of crisis i also plan to actually write some first-person chapters that mostly are just the signs being emo/talking about their feelings and whatever, because you know all 12 of them are incredibly stressed and sad. these first person chapters are called "[name]'s interlude" and the "name" part just depends on whose point of view it's from; e.g. "angela's interlude"
• some more misery, conversations with the ZK, and library searches later…
• IT'S RAINING MAN, HALLELUJAH, ANGELA'S FOUND THE CURE
• it's a spell that, when casted, will supposedly unbind black cat's curse to black cat's holder and they'll return back to a human!
• i have this plan for the spell to be casted with something that's currently called a "planetary weapon" as a placeholder name. it's essentially just a weapon based off of the ruling planet of whatever sign is holding it
• and then at some point, virgo gathers the signs together and then they do that group planning thing that all superheroes do before heading into the villain's lair
• here comes the good old Final Confrontation
• some more misery, blood, and angst later….
• for double the pain, i was planning on leo casting the spell to finally get rid of black cat
• [spell casting progress: 98%]
• [spell casting progress: complete]
• oh hey look, it's the mom of that one sign whose mom went missing like 8 years ago and now doesn't remember anything. fun
• so, basically: missing mom = black cat
• aaaaannnnddddd you can imagine that the entire story goes full-on emo from here on out. leo, virgo, scorpio, and taurus are all aware of the emotional stress said sign is going through after this revelation, so literally all four of them disappear from the daily patrols the superhero team set up and the rest of the gang is really confused
• you thought it ended there? no
• after the spell is casted by leo, the black cat charm unbinds from their holder and leaves that poor human being alone! yay. unfortunately, the black cat charm latches onto leo instead and you know what that means - leo's currently undergoing the transformation into the next villain/black cat and the only way the signs know of getting rid of it is to cast the spell again, but then you'd pass it on to another sign, which really isn't much better.
• one of angela's interludes begins right after this happens, and it literally starts with the line "If you want to turn a monster back into a human, you must first deprive someone else of their humanity. I wish I had learned this sooner."
• everything's still terrible.

WOW THAT WAS REALLY CONFUSING!!! I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT I AM DOING AND ASK FOR THE VOID TO CONSUME ME. and as you can see the plot doesn't resolve itself because i literally have no idea how to end this story. so that's fun! i'm posting this at 7:29 pm but i wrote this actual post at 12 something am so that's also fun.

i'm too lazy to include character relations in this reply, so we'll talk about it in the next post i guess :")

[that awkward moment when this is suddenly three days ago I'm so sorry] [I was consumed by stress and exams and this high school villainy thing is sounding really good right about now] [anyway]

• I had to ask… where is the divide between East/West? Idk I'm just imagining a villain surfacing in like South Sudan or something and both sets of heroes show up like… well this is awkward
• How powerful is black cat exactly?? I mean taking over the heroes is no joke
• Stereotypical Wise Old People are the best
• The "wheel" I like it
• I can just imagine the puns in your chatroom thing
• I agree - jumping right into action and introducing people later seems like it would work better
• Enemies as in plural? Are they like under black cat or are they independent?
• Book hunting is the best! Where would she find books on it though?
• Yay for moral support!
• Media are dumbutts I already hate them
• [Hero] Interludes sound amazing!
• IT
• WAS
• THE
• MOTHER
• WHATTT
• "undergoing transformation" whoa okay I'm sorry please ignore the fact that I'm ignorant
  But like
  So the black cat charm holder is basically brainwashed, right? So that means that the black cat charm makes all the plans and stuff and sets the course? But like, what's its agenda? Why does it do what it does? Is it just angry at the zodiacs for all generations forever and ever amen? Why is it targeting the Western zodiacs if the Eastern ones technically locked it out of the zodiac? Aaaaah and like can a person hold two charms at the same time like isn't the leo charm just as powerful as the black cat charm?
  If the black cat charm just latches onto whoever's next then how did past wheels (eeey) handle it? Or has it just wreaked havoc on humanity for eons and no one really knows how to deal with it?
  Does the mother remember anything about being black cat or was it complete brainwashing? Does anyone try to hold her responsible? How did she get the black cat curse to begin with?
  I know you haven't really worked this bit out so it's really unfair to ask you all these questions
  Feel free to ignore me
• PLEASE TELL ME THEY WON'T HAVE TO SACRIFICE ONE OF THE ZODIACS
• ESPECIALLY NOT LEO
• BECAUSE AM AND PM
• The void just called
  It said that it would be happy to consume you except it's too invested in this story

So anyway
I'm sorry to say that this whole "me not getting my act together" thing will continue at least for the next three weeks until I graduate
I just have exams and visitors that I haven't seen in years and I will be so stressed
So I doubt I'll be able to reply regularly
BUT I'M STILL SUPER INTERESTED/INVESTED IN YOUR STORY
It's up to you whether you think it's worth typing out stuff for me or if you're like nah
Either way thank you so much for everything! I've really enjoyed all your info and worldbuilding and character names and just aaaah
You are everything I aspire to be as a writer
Anyway
So yeah
[I'm sorry I'm really awkward right now] [my brain is fried from minimal studying attempts and procrastination] [yaaaaaaay]

yOOO, don't worry! take as long as you'd like to respond to messages - i'm going through a lot of stress as well; a lot of my AP classes/classes in general are assigning a crap ton of end of the year assignments, and recently i've been drowning in classwork. i'm sure it's nothing compared to what you're currently experiencing, considering the fact that i'm literally not even in high school yet

• the divide between east/west would probably be the western & eastern hemispheres (so basically the prime meridian). in the beginning of the story, phoebe offhandedly mentions that there were some weird "sightings" around the area (aka black cat's starting weird crap around the area in order to try and force the ZK to call upon a new wheel of zodiacs).
• puns are A+
• i'm gonna try and answer your "are there independent enemies or are they affiliated with BC" and your "how powerful is BC" question all in one: i was thinking instead of creating enemies all by herself, black cat takes control of normal day civilians and using her own power, she equips them with the power necessary to steal the zodiac charms from the zodiacs and also become essentially a mini villain.
• there has to be some sort of circumstance that allows black cat to infect/evilize a person, and her power has to limit how many evilized people she can manage in a time period, otherwise BC could literally just go about evilizing the entire city lmao
• black cat, using some good ol' estimation, can approximately guess where the civilian forms of the zodiacs are living/are situated by setting down enemies in different locations and seeing how quickly the zodiacs can get to the site, which is why she specifically takes control of people in that area, because it means they could possibly have close connections to the civilian zodiacs, which would make the zodiacs hesitant to fight them.
• if BC infects a victim via an item the victim is wearing in order to gain control of them, then that item could be referred to as a "talisman" - ironic because talisman is supposed to be something that brings good luck. also talisman has the word tail in it and you know, cats
• of course, nothing is certain! i'm still not sure how everything would work
• the current route i'm taking for the story is that they just got their charm at the beginning of the story; i suck at writing fights and even if i change it later, it'll give me some good old practice with introducing characters
• the media is, in fact, dumb butts in this story
• interludes are gonna be fairly easy to write i think, all i have to do is sound miserable while writing and since i'm always miserable, this'll be a breeze (watch me jinx it)
• I T W A S T H E M O T H E R

i'm starting a separate list for the history of the current black cat, here we go (this is gonna be confusing)

• for this explanation, i'm going to use aries/edith as the person who this happens to; i have no idea if this plot point revolves around aries/edith or not, but it's easier to it apply to a character rather than saying "this sign"
• so aries/edith is just a placeholder for now
• so, throughout the story, edith only has her father because her mother Mysteriously Disappeared(tm) a couple years ago when she was younger.
• her mom was a pretty successful businesswoman (have yet to decide in exactly what, though) who was frequently not at home due to business trips and whatnot, but she always made sure to return for holidays and to skype often!
• most of her business trips are in china
• …..you can probably tell where this is going
• edith's mom, unknown to both edith and her father, is the rat zodiac holder! (and she simultaneously also has a lot of business trips in china anyways, so "i just have so many meetings" is a good coverup for her superhero missions)
• soon, however, the eastern zodiacs also decide that it's time to get rid of black cat
• [insert stereotypical long battle scene here]
• and after that battle scene, rat is the last zodiac still in a good condition to fight. a lot of the other eastern zodiacs are injured, so they all pitch in to help bring one another to the hospital so they like….you know….don't bleed to death
• at this point black cat is pretty weak too, so it's not too big of a problem for rat to handle the situation by herself.
• [spell casting progress: 98%]
• [spell casting progress: complete]
• aaaannndddd black cat is unmasked, the charm unbinds itself from its previous victim and latches onto rat instead.
• rat realizes that she cannot return home if she's literally undergoing a transformation into BC, and since none of the other zodiacs were around to witness the scene, only rat knows that she's officially the new victim of the curse
• hey, it's december! edith and her father are both really excited to see their mom/wife again, so they're going through the motions of decorating the house, and young edith skypes her mom one night
• her mom's like "ah, sorry, i can't come home this year. a new issue arised at the last meeting that requires my immediate attention, but i'll be sure to come back in mid-january to celebrate a late new year!"
• both edith and her father are disappointed because it's like tradition now for mom to be home, but at the same time, they both understand that life gets in the way and they're like "okay, bye, see you in january!"
• they celebrate a nice christmas at home, while mom's out in china having a mental breakdown
• hey, it's mid january!
• where's mom
• mom where are you
• mOOOOOMMMMMM
• m o m
• m O M
• MOM PLS ANSWER YOUR SKYPE
• aaaanndddd she's not there, or answering her skype. edith and her father are concerned, but they brush it off as maybe there was an airport/plane delay, or mom just needed a power nap (come on, it's like a 12 hour flight from china to 'murica), or she's stuck in traffic or whatnot, so they chill at home and stay up late to wait for her to come back.
• mom it's like 1 in the morning where are you
• yeah, she's not coming home.
• edith's dad is worried, so he phones up the company his wife works for and hopes that they know about her whereabouts
• "hey there! um yeah, where the hell is my wife"
• (that's not what he said but basically)
• "oh yeah we have literally no idea. she took like two weeks off and that's all we know. would you like to purchase a car"
• "no???"
• [click]
• "wtf you guys where's my wiFE"
• sorry, edith's dad, you're on your own now
• after contacting local hospitals (maybe his wife was sick or something…) he finally settles to the uncomfortable conclusion that his wife is, in fact, missing.
• (spongebob narrator voice) 7 hours later
• his wife is officially declared as missing, and the company she works for is in some hot water. the company's image/reputation is somewhat ruined because even if it really didn't have anything to do with the company, it still means that an employee disappeared and you had literally no idea
• aaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnndddd they never found her.
• by now, i think the black cat charm would've totally consumed edith's mother with its curse, and so a few weeks or months later, a new black cat (edith's mother, though nobody knows this) and she causes havoc in china, so a set of eastern zodiac charms are sent out to the new wheel of zodiacs.
• history repeats itself - the rat zodiac holder from the new wheel deeply angers black cat when she steals back the zodiac charms BC had taken from their holders; black cat's heart is dead set on getting back at rat for this
• a couple weeks later, it gets onto the media that the rat zodiac holder is apparently giving up her charm; the reason was intended to be kept secret, but as usual, the media happens and it's leaked to the internet that the holder of the rat zodiac is leaving for america and therefore won't be able to tend to their duties (because america's like 12 hours from china)
• black cat, obviously, follows rat to america and begins to send out enemies at random in hopes of waking the wheel of western zodiacs
• aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnddddddd she's successful. the western zodiac charms are sent out to a new wheel of zodiacs

and here's a separate list for the black cat curse:

• the BC charm holder is basically brainwashed, yes! once the transformation process is finished, the new BC loses most of their memories of their past life - all they remember is that it was a good life, and they want to return to it. when they become the villain, their appearance and personality is usually twisted horribly in order to render them unrecognizable. after they lose the curse, they can't remember anything - like, anything at all about them being black cat or who they were before BC. eventually, memories of their old life will slowly return, but memories of being BC only return in little bits and pieces, so they never really remember fully.
• i'm considering of making the BC charm semi-sentient; i like to think that the BC charm tells its new holder that to unbind the charm, all they have to do is to collect all twelve of the eastern zodiac charms, and the curse will be removed. individual charms are actually pretty useless - a single zodiac charm's power cannot beat the power of the BC charm, but twelve of them against it can beat it easily.
• so, the ultimate goal of all of the black cat villains is to steal all of the zodiac charms, remove the curse, and go back to their past life.
• traditionally, the black cat villain fights the eastern zodiacs, because the western ones haven't done anything to BC, and ophiuchus fights the western zodiacs. the ophiuchus charm wants all twelve of the western charms, while the BC charm wants all twelve of the eastern zodiacs - ophiuchus and black cat are similar in the manner that they were both "locked" out of the modern zodiac.
• and also, once a superhero's duties are over, the charms are revoked by the ZK and then locked away as to make sure that they aren't lost (it would be kind of useless to have the charms active when there's no threat, anyway). however, this wheel's ZK really wasn't expecting for black cat - a villain that literally always targets the eastern zodiacs - to travel to america for the sole purpose of getting back at the rat zodiac
• that's why the eastern charms are still kept active in china in fear that black cat will abruptly go back to china, and that also allows for the eastern zodiacs to pay the western ones a visit! (well, only six of the eastern zodiacs come over. also, they literally didn't even come over because they wanted to see the western zodiacs - in their civilian forms, they ended up getting chosen as the six foreign exchange students to go to america, which is why they come)
• for now, the eastern zodiacs just deal with petty crimes like purse theft and whatnot.
• where's ophiuchus, then??
• don't worry, i didn't leave our favourite serpent bearer (….or our only serpent bearer) out! anyways, the last holder was killed and the curse aspect of the ophiuchus charm was successfully de-activated, so now it can only latch onto someone if they actually consent to it. good job to the wheel of zodiacs who did this b/c they were probably the only ones who knew what they were doing
• is ophiuchus appearing in the story? yep! the new holder for the ophiuchus charm will be somebody in their school (so…..another fifteen year old)
• so, it goes something like this:
• BC: hey
• soon-to-be-holder: oh my god aren't you
• BC: yeah your local supervillain
• BC: okay so i need a sidekick because this group of twelve toddlers is surprisingly difficult to handle
• BC: you'll hold the ophiuchus charm, which is a zodiac associated with healing and whatever. i'll infect the charm to give you extra powers, and in return you'll basically be my advisor and part-time doctor
• soon-to-be-holder: uhhhhhhhhhh thanks for the offer but i got an english essay to write tonight and a ton of homework in general. can't help you sorry
• BC: but-
• soon-to-be-holder: this is not a negotiable matter
• BC: okay listen here. i'm literally a supervillain. if you join me, i'll blackmail all of your teachers into giving you a ton of extra credit on everything so you'll never have to study again
• soon-to-be-holder:
• soon-to-be-holder: this is a very negotiable matter
• (that's not really what happens but i'm so tired so there's an approximate outline of it)
• and now black cat has a sidekick!
• anyways, moving on
• every black cat is a zodiac from the previous wheel, and sometimes other zodiacs are present to witness it, but most of them keep their mouths shut about it, so even though the charms have been around for so long, literally nobody knows the truth
• think about it: the media is already always ready to devour you whole because of your superhero status; would you really want to let them know that one of their esteemed superheroes will actually become the new supervillain for the next wheel of zodiacs to fight? my personal decision would be to keep everything private and be like "yeah it's all chill" even when it's definitely not chill. i'd probably just try to resolve everything without alerting anyone else but the zodiac team
• of course, eventually i think i'll make the zodiac team seek out the texts written by the generation that de-activated the ophiuchus charm in order to remove BC's charm.
• as for leo being sacrificed………..we will see

here's another list:

• hey hey hey, do you remember when i mentioned phoebe meets "ten other equally confused and unlucky teenagers along with one teenager who apparently perfectly understands what's happening" in my response to you that included all of the crap about the names??
• wanna guess who that one teenager who has a perfect grasp on what's happening is??
• the old rat zodiac holder, obviously, but their new alias is the sagittarius zodiac holder
• remember when i mentioned in the name post that civilian sagittarius was going to be chinese for a "reason that i'll explain later"? there's your reason. she comes from china, she was the old rat zodiac holder and she was chosen again to become the holder of sagittarius zodiac charm.
• one quirk i'll planned on putting into civilian sagi is that she has a weird obsession with cheese. like, literally any kind, and it's brought up throughout the story often as just "a weird thing this character does"
• this is 100% me just overthinking but i thought it would be a good nod to sagi's previous status as the rat zodiac. i'm not quite sure if i want there to ever be a super dramatic reveal - obviously i'll reveal her previous status, but there's a difference between "revealing in the heat of battle" and "casual but omnious hinting".
• anyways let's move onto another random topic because i have no idea how to smoothly transition
• to add onto angela (virgo)'s perfectionist personality, angela is notorious in all of her classes for being incredibly studious. she has a heated but friendly rivalry with this other very smart kid in her class - even though angie's so smart, obviously she doesn't get 100s on everything (but mostly everything, i guess) but this kid somehow does??
• wow i wonder why
• maybe it's because he's in cahoots with your local supervillain who's been blackmailing all of his teachers to give him extra credit in return for his service as the ophiuchus zodiac
• but that's just a theory…….a gaME THEORY

anndddd we'll cover relationships in the next post. i'm tired

GREETINGS FROM THE VOID

Basically the situation is:

• I am stressed
• I have serious procrastination issues
• Hell week starts tomorrow
• My serious procrastination issues mean that I cannot allow myself to use the internet for non-school related purposes
• This unfortunately includes notebook.ai
• This means I will be gone
• And unable to reply
• For a very long time (okay not long more like… two weeks, with the possibility of lifting the ban on the 16th for a day but hey let's exaggerate for dramatic effect)
• I apologise

I also apologise for the lack of actually interesting/relevant questions [when did this become me pestering you for answers about little nitpicky details of your plot?? idk I'm enjoying it but if this ever turns out to be annoying just say the word]
But here goes

1. Does black cat lose power the more mini-villains she creates or is her power unlimited? I mean like does she share her power with her mini-villains or does she give them external (sustainable) sources of power? I mean yes the zodiac charms but how does she sustain them until they get there?
2. How common is it for a zodiac charm to be stolen? How would the mini-villains be able to distinguish what the charm is? If it's taken off in battle, does that mean that all the other zodiacs (+ media who are there) suddenly know the zodiac holder's civilian identity?
3. "Tail"isman eeeeeeey
4. SO if the rat zodiac holder is a grown woman [and apparently actually not in the East but part of the Eastern zodiac??], this brings back the question of what qualifies someone to be a holder
   Once again I wonder why the ZK would choose teenagers if other people (= emotionally stable (ish) mothers) are available and eligible
5. How long does the BC transformation take? How long does it take for the person to lose their sentience/ become mind controlled?
6. If the charm itself is semi-sentient, what does it want out of life? (or non-life) like does it also have a zodiac deity behind it or is it just like hey let's cause havoc and stuff
7. Hehehe I love the sidekick getting 100% at everything
8. Honestly though ophiuchus is goals like who doesn't want occasional villainy in exchange for perfect grades
9. Where is law enforcement and military in all this? How does the government feel about having villains wreak constant havoc?
10. How does this affect world history? Do the zodiac wheels have to travel all over the world to defeat evil or is it mainly just America and China?
    This is probably way too nitpicky because honestly no one but me cares but like how would the idea of having superheroes affect events such as WW2? Like would they ever join in such conflicts? If they did, would they ever have joined on different sides (idk since China is still Communist would that have affected the way the eastern zodiacs behaved in the Cold War compared to the Western zodiacs? or do the eastern zodiac not have to be Chinese since the east does include Eastern Europe, Russia, lower Asia, and…. hold on never mind it did include the (American???) rat who became bc)
    JUST IGNORE ME
    I AM IGNORANT

but yes
relationships
Hit me up (if you can if I haven't been really rude and overwhelming with the questions)
(also)
(this is very random)
(but what do the characters look like?)
(I've been picturing them in my head and had itches to draw some of them but then I realised hey I actually know nothing about them or their appearances) [other than gemini being red and blue and libra wearing glasses]
(so that would be foolish)
(so yeah if you have any appearances yet) (I would be very interested)
(the saddest thing is that I already have headcanons about your characters' appearances like I'm sorry I really need to chill)

GREETINGS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VOID

• it's all good! homework and stress levels are starting to go down for me, because this is my last week of school, so take your time!
• at this point i should be the one apologizing b/c whenever i try to talk to people about my stories, they either aren't interested or are interested and then immediately regret it later because i info-dump so hard
• tbh real talk, if this conversation is just getting stressful and annoying, PLEASE DON'T HESTITATE TO ASK ME TO SHUT UP. one of my lifelong struggles as an introvert is the fact that there's no real way to politely word "i think you're a cool and good person but i honestly just don't wanna talk right now/don't have the energy or motivation to maintain this conversation" and it's terrible because i don't want to seem like i'm just flat out ditching them but i'm also too tired to interact with them and it's just overall bad
• so like yeah. i'm serious. pls tell me to shut up if it's needed, i will take absolutely zero offense because i've been there
• and i'm absolutely serious when i say i will literally never shut up (until we reach the end of everything i have to say ofc, which is, imo, a lot of things to say) if you don't tell me because i'm 1) too talkative about my stories and 2) terrible at noticing social cues sometimes so
• moral of the story: PLEASE TELL ME TO SHUT UP WHEN YOU NEED ME TO SHUT UP

assuming that you're still interested in the contents of this post to follow, here we go!

• i mean, she shares a small amount of her power with the villains she creates; she can technically never "run" out of power. so like think of it like this: when you unplug your phone, you use up battery, right? well, the battery's dead and the phone doesn't work anymore until you charge it again, but it's not like your entire house just ran out of electricity. think of the phone as the villain BC creates, but in the sense that they can't really run out of power - BC will continually share her power with them, and they only stop being a villain once BC decides "lol this dude is lame" and stops sharing her power, or until the Zodiacs deal with the villain. after creating a villain, BC is a lil tired/her powers are somewhat exhausted, so she waits until she's stronger to create another villain. she gets tired after making a villain, but after a small recovery period, she's all good to go!
• of course, though, this is such a vague explanation, i'll have to figure out the basics of BC's power-sharing later on. like, does her charm glow or something when its magic is being partially granted to another person??
• hmmm, i'd say that the charm theft really depends on the skill level of the holder itself and how well they can fight to keep it. i wouldn't say that it's an incredibly common occurrence, but it definitely happens.
• yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEPPPP. when the charm is taken off, the transformation/powers go with it, so if a zodiac took off their charm, they'd revert to a civilian and whoop, there goes their identity
• of course, this doesn't mean that they have to yank off their charm after every battle to go back to normal. to activate the charm, they just say "[zodiac name here], awaken!" and to revert they say "[zodiac name here], rest." so for the virgo zodiac, for example, it would be "virgo, awaken!" and "virgo, rest."
• i was actually thinking that BC, when she was still a Zodiac, was chosen at about the same age as the main cast of characters - fifteen-sixteen-ish. she just chose to not retire her charm yet, which is why she still has it when she's older. i have no idea as to why ZK chose teenagers over the rest of the available people in the world, though, or perhaps why the charms themselves chose. i have literally no idea
• the BC transformation, i feel, should take a decent chunk of time, but also not too long. i'd say, one to two months?
• i feel like the BC charm itself is starting to "decay" in a way, too. since it was created so long ago, throughout the centuries the original level of intelligence it was granted probably has been extremely weathered, to the point i feel as though the BC charm honestly isn't much better in terms of sentience than the BC holder itself. all it can remember of its original instructions is to influence their new holder for the worse in order to get back at the eastern zodiacs, so that's what it does.
• ophiuchus is, in fact, goals and he hasn't gone through too much character development yet, but he's super chill. he pops up every once in a while to help out when BC requests he does, and i've actually planned for him to legitimately make small talk with the Zodiacs/ask them questions and chat with them very casually (e.g. "how are you today? i'm so happy that it's sunny for once, i was getting kind of sick of the rain") and both BC and the Zodiacs are irritated and confused. BC's like "WHAT THE HELL THIS IS NOT YOUR JOB" and the Zodiacs are like "WHAT THE HELL KIND OF VILLAIN ARE YOU"
• i would think that things like robberies are mostly the local police force's job (of course, the Zodiacs will stop a crime if they see one being committed) while they leave the supervillain stuff to the superheroes. i'm honestly not sure what the government would think of this; since i'm currently using seattle as a placeholder city, i feel like the state of washington would be like "yeah, same crap as always" and the rest of united states is like "wtf is going on up there"
• no, it's not just america and china, i just chose those two countries mostly for my own convenience. the western Zodiacs deal with trouble on the western hemisphere, and the eastern Zodiacs deal with trouble on the eastern hemisphere. typically, once BC finds out where the new wheel of Zodiacs is, they won't change the locations of their attack drastically - i mean, they definitely will change the locations of their attacks at random in order to throw the heroes off, but since their main goal is to snatch all the charms back, they typically wouldn't move their attacks to a whole new city or country, only different locations within the city.
• if BC does move attack locations, and their new target is way too far for the current wheel to access easily, the charms will be revoked and then sent out to a new wheel in that area.
• so the Zodiacs can be any ethnicity, they just have to be within the area
• MAN I NEVER EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT THINGS LIKE WW2…….i have no idea, honestly. i should really start researching on that (translation: that's important and i acknowledge it, but my lazy butt will never do research on it)

as for zodiac appearances, i'd actually be interested in hearing what you think they look like! it's always interesting to see how my characters manifest in other peoples' imaginations………

ok here comes the (very underdeveloped) relationships, here we goooooooOOOOOOOO

cancer + leo:

• leo is crushin' so hard on cancer
• but they make a good team!
• leo really does not have the best idea on how to win a girl over, so he flirts fairly badly with cancer
• cancer finds it semi-annoying but they make it work

phoebe + adrien:

• one of my Writing Friends(tm) (i have f r i e n d s, believe it or not, but only like 1.5 friends) suggested that to make everything more annoying, i should have phoebe crush on adrien!
• i had never actually considered the idea before about this very ironic…….love triangle?? kind of??
• previously i had been dead set on phoebe and adrien just being casual friends in real life, with no romantic love from either side for the other, but the one-sided love from phoebe for adrien would actually be pretty interesting!
• i take no credit for this idea, though, all of it goes to an internet friend. i'm not smart enough to come up with things like this

edith + casey:

• as a refresher, edith is aries and casey (that's his placeholder name for now, i guess) is 1/2 of gemini!
• i was thinking of casey maaaaaybbeeeee having a small crush on edith

aletia + phoebe:

• quick reminder; aletia is the zodiac libra, and phoebe is the zodiac cancer!
• they're best friends
• aletia is much more of a social butterfly/more extroverted than phoebe is, though, so that leads to a lot of stereotypical situations in the stereotypical extrovert and introvert friendship where aletia's dragging phoebe along to do the dreaded Social Interaction(tm), while phoebe's like god no please no somebody help, i'm being kidnapped, i don't know who this woman is

aries + gemini:

• casey has literally no idea who is under aries' mask, so while he likes edith, he finds aries annoying
• the first time casey + his sister received the charm, casey didn't want to be involved in this superhero crap, so he let his very energetic sister take it instead, which she happily did!
• like the Willingly Responsible Sibling(tm) that casey is, he followed his sister around on her first time as a superhero to make sure she didn't die or something
• edith was stoked as hell to be a superhero, so basically she made some Questionable Decisions(tm) that put casey's sister in danger (she wasn't hurt, though!)
• anyways, casey is still annoyed at aries for that; he thinks aries is a blatant rule breaker with no regard for consequences
• aries thinks (boy) gemini is uptight and boring
• their relationship isn't exactly hatred for one another, though, just somewhat rude rivalry
• this relationship might be discarded later because i find it a little too similar to other planned relationships

scorpio + taurus:

• they hate each other
• neither of them go out of their way to purposely ruin the other person's day (unlike aries and gemini) but you know that scorpio has to get that one sassy remark in whenever she can and that really annoys taurus
• yeah.
• in case you are wondering where i got the idea for this relationship from, it's because i'm going to follow the modern set of ruling planets for my story - in the modern set of ruling planets, taurus is ruled by ceres (dwarf planet) instead of venus.
• ceres' greek counterpart is demeter, goddess of the harvest and nature-y things; demeter had a daughter, persephone, that was kidnapped by hades to be his wife (or she willingly married him, it differs in different stories)
• scorpio is ruled by pluto, whose greek counterpart is hades
• i don't know about you, but i'd sure as hell hate hades if he kidnapped my goddamn daughter to be his wife; i haven't read anywhere that hades and demeter dislike each other, but y'know, they probably might
• of course, none of those events happen in the story i'm writing, but the negative relationship between scorpio and taurus is just based off of that particular greek myth
• i probably wouldn't have made a negative relationship between those two otherwise, lmao

angela + everest:

• also every time i mention a civilian, i'm just gonna remind you about which zodiac they are, in the case that you don't remember/can't keep track of twelve characters (which is reasonable)
• angela is virgo and everest is capricorn! i didn't like the name reagan for capricorn, so i'm deciding on everest instead, because part of capricorn's symbol is a mountain goat. capricorns are notorious for "climbing the ladder" and "reaching places others cannot" (symbolized by the mountain-climbing goat, which climbs to high places) so why not name civilian capricorn after the tallest mountain in the world? it seems fitting to me!
• everest is notably less organized than angela (his room is a mess) but he likes to collect little bits and parts and also antiques and stuff. i decided a passion for building things and for engineering would suit everest well, so that's why he collects spare parts
• despite his lack of organization, angela and everest get along really well and they're a great team! both are really intelligent and admire the other's talent
• everybody finds them as a team intimidating.
• they aren't aware of each other's superhero alter ego, though
• no greek myth inspiration for this relationship, just my own work ayyy

angela + adrien:

• they become good friends after an accidental identity reveal because they're like "oh wow, somebody in this school that i can relate to"
• adrien also helps angela (in the later half of the book) do some library hunting and identity searching for BC's civilian self
• most of the time, though, it's just angela babysitting adrien because he is not capable of making smart decisions sometimes

adrien + casper + octavia:

• adrien is leo, casper is taurus, octavia is scorpio
• really awkward and hesitant friendship that only formed because of a shared hatred of dinner parties
• here's the context: all three of their parents are pretty well off, meaning that they are pretty wealthy, and all three run brand companies, so whenever they're invited to a formal event, their children are expected to come along to provide a good image for their parents' company
• newsflash: all three of them hate those events because there's a hundred other more entertaining things that they could be doing for three hours
• octavia's parents are jewelers, casper's parents obviously have to do something related to financing and i have no idea what career adrien's parents are in. pls help
• casper's parents are doing something with financing because of taurus ruling the second house (associated with money and material goods/things), and octavia's parents are jewelers because of scorpio's ruling planet, pluto.
• pluto was a god that was originally the god of the mines and minerals, associated with things like gold and silver; he evolved into the god of the underworld because he already ruled things that were underground, so it makes sense
• gold and silver remind me of jewelry and whatnot, so that's why octavia's parents are jewelers.
• alternatively, they can be doctors, which is a career path that deals with death, and pluto is the god of death.
• i think the jeweler idea is cooler, though
• for now i need to figure what the hell adrien's parents are doing
• ALSO: edith might get thrown into this friendship as well, because i do plan on making her father a lawyer!

edith + octavia:

• casual friendship
• everybody finds octavia intimidating, but not edith, for whatever reason
• octavia always says that edith is annoying as hell but she's secretly really grateful for edith's friendship

virgo + sagittarius:

• virgo thinks that sagittarius is way too hyper and bouncy, and that she needs to chill out
• meanwhile, sagittarius thinks that she is 100% very chill and that virgo is the one who needs to chill out with the rules.
• no hatred, just some exasperated parenting from virgo's side

everest + civilian sagittarius:

• i haven't given a name to the civilian identity of sagittarius, whoops
• anyways, civilian sagittarius thinks that everest's techy equipment and the things he built are SO COOL, and she likes to toy around with his creations
• everest does not like it when anyone other than angela touches his things, so he finds her semi-annoying
• also civilian sagittarius refers to everest simply as "tech kid", due to the fact that she continually mispronounces his name and just decides on not pronouncing it all together

aries + leo + sagittarius:

• wonderful team and teamwork skills, not so wonderful decision-making and impulse control
• pop quiz! what will the fire signs do if you leave them unsupervised?
• a: do something of questionable legality
• b: blow up something
• c: set something on fire
• trick question!
• it's d: all of the above
• aries and leo occasionally get into squabbles about who's leading because of their desires to have things their way, but otherwise, they get along just fine

virgo + capricorn + taurus:

• virgo and capricorn aren't as close as they are in their civilian forms to each other, but they still get along very well
• taurus likes to work with the two of them, but unfortunately, virgo and capricorn get along so well that taurus feels like he's eternally third-wheeling and the unwanted side friend
• taurus also doesn't care for details as much as virgo does and that deeply angers virgo

angela/virgo + everybody in her superhero team, her school, and within a 50 mile radius:

• angela/virgo is mom friend supreme and she babysits everybody
• preeettttyyyyy sure the zodiac team wouldn't be alive right now if it weren't for virgo

aaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnddddd that's all i have for relationships! unfortunately i haven't included pisces or aquarius in this, so i'll have to work on that! i'm considering pisces' civilian name to be mira, marielle, or mariella. mira means "ocean" and sometimes "wonder" and "peace", which suits pisces! pisces is a water sign, and also known for being diplomats and daydreaming excessively. marielle means "star of the sea" in relation to pisces' element (water) and its symbol (two fish). mariella means something similar; it means "sea of sorrow", which also kind of works, given the sea part and the fact that pisces is highly emotional, which relates to the sorrow part.

i have absolutely no idea what aquarius' civilian name should be, lmao

anyways! i'd love to hear your feedback on:

• what the signs look like to you
• what adrien's parents' career is
• if the relationships are interesting, and what new relationships between the signs (civilian and superhero!) to create/what to add to existing relationships
• what pisces' name should be; you can choose between the three i listed (mira, marielle, and mariella) or suggest your own (i'm sure you've got better ideas than me lmao)
• aquarius' civilian name?????
• also, relationships for civilian/superhero pisces and civilian/superhero aquarius

so yep! all questions and feedback, no matter how dumb you think they are, are wholeheartedly embraced because i have no idea what i'm doing. yeah.

ALSO SORRY THIS IS THREE DAYS LATE????? I'M A TERRIBLE PERSON SORRY

I LIVE!!!
(mostly)
Can I just say that I am a terrible human being for not replying to this thing for like two weeks
I'm so sorry that I haven't replied yet, it will happen SOON
(not today, unfortunately, because I'm moving out tomorrow and I still haven't packed up my room)
I didn't know what was worse, not replying at all or replying just to tell you that the actual reply is on the way, so…. yeah
Once again, I apologise for the delay
I will get my act together shortly
I have started a bit on my random headcanons/appearances for your characters but am far from done so…
[crawls back under the rock I just emerged from]
[I don't think I've ever used the word "reply" this much]
[ninja violinist out]

ooF

i'm way too lazy to formulate an actual, legit reply, but here's a response saying that i've read your post

…. I'm back?

~DISCLAIMER~

1. My headcanons for your character's appearances (and otherwise, I guess??) will not match yours. That's a fact. Your ideas always trump mine and I am ready to change my view.
2. I think I said this later, but I'm not American and I went to an international school, so I have a very bad grasp of usual American demographics. Idk, a lot of these characters aren't Caucasian in my head. [UPDATE: Actually most of them are never mind this whole spiel] Not that they can't be. All the ethnic features I list are, once again, my own headcanons with no basis. Like, I have no reason to picture Octavia as a tall buff black girl with braids but I do and if that doesn't match your vision then I'm wrong.
3. I wrote this over the course of the past 3 (?) (gosh I suck I'm so sorry) weeks, so it's mostly incoherent, disjointed, and badly spelled. And unedited.

So here we go:

Appearances (or, rather, my random assorted headcanons about your characters)(or, rather, irrefutable evidence that I have no chill whatsoever):
Edith - very short, dark brown (shoulder length) straight hair that's always in a ponytail, pretty tan (my first thought was that she was of Hispanic descent but idk up to you)
Random headcanon: she is one of those angry short people ™ , like someone who will get all in your face
Kind of like a Chihuahua
Octavia - idk why but I've been picturing her as African American (doesn't really fit with the name though). She seems like a braids kind of person. I also picture her as relatively tall (because you had that thing about Edith/Octavia relationship and idk they seem like they have that tall/small person friendship going on)
Random headcanon: Octavia is buff. Like, "I can prevent my three dogs from molesting your cat with one hand tied behind my back" kind of buff.
Aletia - hair color somewhere in between blond and brown, really thick and wavy hair that's pretty short, glasses (like you said), clothing is always perfectly color-coordinated
Random headcanon: She recently cut her hair (which is why it's so thick) and donated over a foot of it to charity
Angela - (this is so bad but the first thing I think of when the name Angela is said is either the German Chancellor or the talking cat app)
Which is why I picture her with nondescript light brown thin straight hair, and a generally organised and no-nonsense appearance, always has a watch and an extra pen with her
Random headcanon: Angela organises her stationery by color
Phoebe - black wavy hair that she generally pins back, kind of pale, dark eyes, average height
Random headcanon: She has one chicken pox scar on her temple (because the moon and the man in the moon and marks??? Idk)
Gemini - idk why but I've been picturing them as having Jewish descent (don't ask me, ask my brain)
- Girl: Ridiculously pretty (like above average), with dark curly hair, really big eyes, and a cute dimple when she laughs, quite tall, oval face, red color scheme like you said
Random headcanon: She wears homemade earrings (like made out of bottle caps or something)
- Boy: Also tall, curly hair (are they identical twins?), but more of an edgy face, with heavy brows, blue color scheme
Random headcanon: He wears a homemade bracelet that his sister made for him, but he always hides it because he's embarrassed by it
Adrien - wild curly blond hair, hazel eyes, basically a Golden Retriever in human form
Random headcanon: He has an obsession with playing basketball
Everest - uuuuhhhhh
Well the goat comparison is forever ingrained into my head so I can't help but picture him as one of those small compact sort of people, with a goatee. And this is weird, and kinda random, but I also picture him with… not dreads exactly, it's still like an afro on top of his head but he's twisted them into tiny dreads idk how to explain it
Once again, I picture Everest as an African American person
But I think he's lighter than Octavia in my head? Everest is like an Habesha skin tone (light, orange undertones) and Octavia is more Zanzibar skin tone (like really really dark)
Idk I'm sorry
I went to an international school so to me it seems natural to have different nationalities/ethnicities but I guess that's not the average American demographic so yeah
Casper - uuuuuuuuuuhhh
This one's actually white, I think? He's red-haired, but more of a muted rust-color.
Once again, don't ask me ask my brain, but he seems kind of like a punk person? I can imagine him with a nose ring and tattoos and stuff but then that probably wouldn't make a lot of sense with his parents being like prim proper finance people soo….
Yeah never mind I guess
Civilian Sagittarius - Now that the mouse connection exists, I've started picturing her as small - not in an Edith "you got a problem with that" small ™ kind of way but just in a "I'm short and that's me" kind of way. Hair shoulder length, mostly black but the tips still slightly red from when she dyed it a few years back (idk but a lot of my Korean friends dye their hair red at some stage, it's just a random connection I have).
I don't really have much to say about her?
Mira - (that's my vote for her name, at least) [uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhh]
I don't really know much about her but I picture her with long hair (because of the mermaid connection) and, sort of like female Gemini, I picture her as super pretty. Like above average, the sort of pretty that people notice and comment on. But that daydreaming, emotional, and diplomatic aspect you talked about makes her seem like the Innocent ™ anime trope.
Dunno. She seems like the sort of person who wears flower print dresses and sunhats.
Aquarius - I also don't know much about this sign… I'm not even sure about the gender, actually. From what I can tell from my (limited) google searches, Aquarius is the activist/humanitarian sort of sign, right? Depending on their gender, that could mean a manbun (if we're going for stereotypes). Right now I'm picturing Aquarius as a girl, in which case it's sandals, capris or ripped jeans, pins on the backpack and those little colorful plastic armbands. Curly hair in a bun or hair cut really short. Shorter than a bob.
Again, I don't know the gender but if it's a girl then amy (the most wonderful woman in the world)? Or Philomena? Idk I actually have no idea.

Alright, I think I got everyone?? Hopefully

this is like two weeks later and during this time period I have binged Miraculous Ladybug (this French TV show for kids - I have no life) and anyway my first thought was that it was really similar to your story! It doesn't have a zodiac theme, but it does have the every day items that transform kids into superheroes, but with strict limitations, and the spell that fixes things… the most similar thing though is the main ship. The guy is actually also called Adrien, and just like in your relationships thing superhero Adrien has a crush on his female superhero counterpart but in real life the female counterpart is crushing on Adrien. I can't explain it very well.
Basically:
Phoebe/Cancer is a lot like Marinette/Ladybug and Adrien/Leo is a lot like Adrien/Chat Noir. In the way that the relationships have been set up. Marinette likes Adrien, and Chat Noir likes Ladybug. [And they're also black-haired and blond respectively. Awkward. That was not intentional, I hadn't seen the show before I wrote that character thing down.]
It is the most frustrating relationship as a viewer/reader, which means it's probably a really fun relationship to write about!
[It's a literal love square. IT HURTS MY SOUL THIS KIND OF RELATIONSHIP. WE NEED MORE OF THIS IN FICTION.]
The reason I'm telling you all of this is because it brings up what I find to be a really interesting point on the characterisation. In the ML fandom, even though there's only two characters, the fanbase has FOUR (4) ships and ship names (Adrienette, Ladynoir, Ladrien, Marinoir) and the really weird thing is that people ship some but not all of them. The defense is that the characters act differently in and out of costume and that the relationship dynamics are entirely different.
So my actual question for you is [boy this was a really roundabout way of introducing it I'm so sorry]:
How do the civilian and superhero personalities compare? Not that they should be completely different, but with the safety of anonymity and wearing a mask and the confidence of being a LITERAL SUPERHERO I can imagine that some characters would take the opportunity to reinvent themselves, or overemphasise certain aspects of their personality, or be more flirtatious than in real life… idk. So for example ML Adrien is like a cinnamon roll, absolute sweetheart, couldn't hurt a fly. but Chat Noir, his alter ego, is more flirtatious, makes bad puns, excited, sassy, that sort of thing. It's not that they're mutually incompatible because they're not, but there are definitely differences.
Will that sort of thing rise up in your story? Like, I mean, will characters deliberately show off a different side of themselves as superheroes?
Not that this has to happen, obviously.
Reading over this I don't quite remember what the point was or where I was going with this. Oh well. The more you know, I guess. It's a cute show.

ANYWAY

I love the idea of the Octavia/Casper/Adrien friendship built on parental awkwardness! Having Octavia's parents be jewelers is great! It seems much more likely for jewelers and finance people to frequent the same social situations than it would be for doctors and finance people (though I guess that would work).
when I think of rich people, I think diplomats, so that's an idea for Adrien's parents, but idk why they'd be hanging out with jewelers and finance people. There's the option of marketing people I guess - advertisers, marketing experts, or just people who make a living promoting other people's work. There's also the possibility of having Adrien's parents run a security company - both finance people and jewelers would need a lot of security and might be Adrien's parents' clients??
Just firing out ideas.

The relationships are great so far! Obviously writing it down will flesh it out a bit more and develop them, but so far the way you've set everything up is solid!
One question - how big is their school? The bigger it is, the less likely it would be for all of the signs to know each other in real life. On the other hand, in a small school it would be weird if they didn't know each other because they'd most likely be in the same grade. I mean, there are thirteen signs? I think?? Either way that would have been more than half of my graduating class, and we were pretty close. In a larger school, it'd be entirely plausible that Pisces and Aquarius would have nothing to do with any of the other signs, or even with each other necessarily.
Again, I don't think I know enough about their personalities to really help with the relationship aspect very much, but if you're going with the "Aquarius activist" thing (idk if it's actually a thing bc my research skills are not very great) I'm guessing she'd be pretty notorious? Like oh there goes amy (the most wonderful woman in the world) again with her thing for saving the whales.
Another aspect of relationships would be after school activities. Like maybe Female Gemini and Aquarius have nothing to do with each other at school but they both go to the same DIY crafts class.
Or even internet friendships. Edith may not talk to Casey much in person but they're on the same gaming server and she really appreciates his wit?? idk
again, these are just ideas. The relationships you have are already solid and complex, but if you feel like you want more then here's some prompts??

sorry this has been pretty rushed (and) (you know) (LATE)
(and a freaking essay oh dear I am so sorry)
but here you go?

hhhheeeeEEEEYYYY

• welcome back!
• no problem! i’m gonna be honest and say that i don’t have nationalities planned out for any of my characters except one of them (angela) and right now, i do have some appearances planned out, but not that planned out if you know what i mean lmao
• and to be honest, i appreciate your diverse headcanons! i do struggle with diversity sometimes
• also, this is long. i hope you like reading :”)

here’s what i’ve been thinking so far for appearances:

edith:

• long, wavy auburn hair with caramel highlights, and two golden hair pins that help keep it under control because it’s a little messy :”D
• my idea was that edith would tie her hair in two braids when she played sports so she could avoid getting a face full of hair
• my thought was that she’d be like an olive skin colour?? i’m not quite sure if that’s considered a “caucasian” tone (honestly i really haven’t done any research on skin colour. at all.)
• dark brown eyes because why not
• a thing i settled on for edith’s appearance is that she has a scar on her forehead, above her left eyebrow. it’s not a terribly deep scar, but somewhat noticeable. the scar is basically just a long strip of skin that’s a lighter colour than the rest of edith’s skin.
• i thought that this would be a great way to throw in the “daredevil/reckless” trait of aries, because the scar on her forehead can symbolize her rushing into new experiences without thinking first.
• nobody in edith’s school knows how she got the scar. every time somebody asks her, edith changes up the story so it’s literally never the same in two tellings and every single one of them is definitely fake.
• “i went scuba-diving and had to run away from a shark”
• “voldemort tried to kill me”
• “i got cornered in an alleyway when i was in new york by muggers. they cut me on the forehead when i refused to hand over my money”
• “skateboarding accident. i was doing a backward flip and hit my head”
• sure you did, edith.
• she’s aware that nobody believes her. she just likes messing with people
• as for short, edith is definitely on the short side
• SHE IS DEFINITELY AN ANGRY SHORT PERSON™

octavia:

• so, as you probably already know, the personalities of the zodiac signs are based off the stereotypes of the zodiac signs, and for whatever reason, scorpio is stereotyped as one of those Totally Emotionless Broods™.
• that’s probably not true. i’m very sure that scorpios have emotions like the rest of humankind
• anyhow, though, you can picture octavia as one of those people who are Very Mysterious™, and who always 100% without fail can roast you. also, water signs have that unique capability to connect emotionally with others, so even though you can never tell what octavia’s thinking, she definitely knows what you’re thinking.
• honestly, octavia is hard to summarize and i feel like you’d get a better understanding of her personality if you actually read about her interacting with her fellow classmates.
• ….except that i don’t have any writing on her yet. I’LL FIX THAT SOON AAAAAAAAAA
• i don’t know why, but i immediately connected octavia with those vampire families that live in those mildly intimidating mansions. ergo, my personal idea for her appearance was actually having extremely pale skin (….vampires)
• you’re 100% spot-on with the braids, except that octavia wears her hair in only one braid.
• i was thinking that she’d have well-kept, reaaaalllyyy long jet black hair, and the braid she ties it into would be like….waist-length.
• she has pale eyes, probably?
• octavia and her family are definitely the only people that the three dogs will listen to. sometimes octavia takes them for a walk in her park, and pretty much every classmate of her hers thinks her dogs are absolutely terrifying.
• so yes, she can probably restrain all three of her dogs with one hand tied behind her back.

aletia:

• quick note: i changed aletia’s name to cecilia! it means “blind” and i think it fits better with the lady justice theme going on for her, because lady justice wears a blindfold.
• ALSO YOU ARE SPOT-ON AGAIN WITH THE “COLOUR-COORDINATED CLOTHING” THING. cecilia is very much of a fashionista! libras are stereotyped to be social butterflies and to care about their appearance, and also i naturally connected her with a good sense of fashion because libra’s ruling planet is venus, goddess of love, and you know. goddess of love = very pretty
• since libra is an air sign, i also connect that to light colours, and i was thinking cecilia would have wavy, bobbed icy blonde hair.
• for your assistance, here’s a pinterest pin to add some visualization: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/685602743243362980/
• i was thinking maybe gray eyes; not quite sure on skin colour, though.
• cecilia does needs to wear glasses, and she probably has prescription glasses, but she refuses to wear them because she is slightly over-concerned about her appearance and thinks she looks much better without them. also, she just thinks glasses are kind of a hassle anyway
• she finds contacts uncomfortable as well, so cecilia just doesn’t wear anything to aid her vision.
• which her best friend, phoebe, finds really annoying, because in the middle of class, cecilia’ll probably learn over and whisper “hey, what’s the teacher writing on the board? i can’t read it” and phoebe’ll be like “for the love of GOD, just wear some GLASSES, you’ll still look attractive, i promise, please stop bothering me in the middle of class. now i can’t focus on what the teacher is saying and SOME OF US NEED TO GET GOOD GRADES”
• “phoebe, you sound like angela” “i’ll take that as a compliment”

angela:

• i settled on switzerland as her home country! don’t ask why. i saw switzerland and I was like “that’s a very angela country” and then. yeah. my thought process is terrible
• so that means i’m probably going with caucasian on angela, too!
• i actually have no idea on hair colour, though. most likely some shade of brown, to go with the fact that virgo is an earth sign. i actually visualized angela as a pale blonde initially, but i’m not quite sure if that would line up with virgo’s element that well
• of course, not every hair colour needs to match up with the sign’s element. i’m just being my terrible, nit-picky self
• i am fully convinced at this point that you’re a mind-reader.
• “Random headcanon: Angela organises her stationery by color”
• when phoebe goes to school in the second chapter, one of the things she does is literally admiring angela because angie’s binders, folders, notebooks etc are colour-coded by class, and then phoebe very embarrassedly monologues about her own severe lack of organization.
• angela definitely organizes her stationary by colour. you’re 100% right

phoebe:

• how?? do you keep getting my character appearances right??
• yep. phoebe has barely shoulder-length, wavy black hair, and she does use a bobby pin or two to pin it back, but mostly because her parents say that her hair is too messy. phoebe, when inspecting her surroundings at one point in the book, monologues in a mildly jealous manner about how edith’s hair manages to look messy but like, the perfect amount of messy.
• phoebe’s probably jealous of octavia’s silky black hair too
• annnndddd another caucasian character. I NEED TO WORK ON MY DIVERSITY I’M SO SORRY
• i did plan on giving her some birthmarks (?). i don’t really think they’re considered birthmarks, but my idea was that she has some small white spots on parts of her body, scattered here and there
• (it’s my really sad attempt to reference stars. because she’s the moon, y’know?)
• also, she has a light dusting of freckles over the bridge of her nose! not very noticeable, though.
• i think of her as having blue eyes, because of cancer being a water sign.

gemini:

• no idea for skin colour here. go wild lmao
• my thought was that both of them had brown hair and brown eyes to add to the twins thing
• also, they’re the same height!
• tbh you’ve basically got everything right, especially the part about the bottle cap earrings, because i like to think that civilian girl gemini and civilian pisces are like, craft buddies.
• you’re also really close on the “gift from sister he’s embarrassed about” part. girl gemini always wears a butterfly barrette in her hair because of gemini’s association with butterflies. girl gemini gave boy gemini a butterfly enamel pin so that they “could match”; boy gemini was like “this is so STUPID” but he put the butterfly pin on his backpack and that butterfly pin has a permanent residence there now.

adrien:

• THIS?? IS ALSO LITERALLY ALL RIGHT??
• HOW DO YOU DO THIS.
• yes, adrien has blond hair + hazelish brown eyes
• adrien’s mom and dad are both really fussy about him, and his natural hair is considered by them to be “too messy” so he’s forced by them to gel the absolute hell out of his hair and use other copious hair products. after all that, his hair parts sharply above his right eyebrow.
• quick note: adrien doesn’t do that weird “gelled back” hairstyle (which in my opinion is really ugly, whoops). the gel and hair products just make sure his hair will stay in the same hairstyle all day.
• his natural hair (with a slight bit of brushing, which he does do every morning) really isn’t that messy, his parents are just over dramatic
• so, essentially, if you were to touch adrien’s hair while he was at school for whatever reason, it’d feel pretty stiff and unnatural because of all that hair product to force the hair to stay in place. i imagine that it would feel nice and pleasant naturally, though!
• as for sports, i was actually thinking of adrien doing track instead of basketball! lions can run pretty fast.
• i was also thinking that he might do ballet or a more “elegant” pastime (again, parents) and maybe that’s how he initially meets octavia.
• golden retriever comparison is fairly accurate, adrien is a Good Boy™

everest:

• uhhhhh
• to be honest, i have no idea
• maybe italian??
• definitely light brown hair, because capricorn is an earth sign
• (also, hazel or brown eyes!)
• yeah that’s it. i’m a terrible writer
• i’ve already decided that everest will have a penchant for robots, robotics, computers, and mostly everything to do with engineering and coding/computer science.

casper:

• i always thought of him as being japanese-brazilian. don’t ask why i have no idea about the background of the rest of my cast but have a weirdly specific idea of casper’s background :”D
• also brown hair, but way darker than angela’s and everest’s
• i couldn’t imagine casper being punk rock, but his parents are fairly chill and they’d maybe let him get ear piercings if he really managed to persuade him. but i think that’d be as far as they’d let casper go on the piercings - after all, they are pretty prim

civilian sagittarius:

• i think that sagi does sound like the type to dye her hair! i had originally just planned on her having plain black hair, but that wouldn’t reflect her playful personality that well.
• [casually steals your idea about her dyeing her hair]
• unfortunately, i really haven’t spent that much time on her appearance either, so that’s as far as that goes, whoop.
• i honestly do want to establish her as a bright ray of sunshine, though, because supposedly sagittarius never runs out of energy.
• she probably keeps laffy taffy wrappers in her pocket so she can tell the jokes later.

civilian pisces:

• i’m still having an internal debate over her name, so she’ll just be nicknamed civilian pisces for now :”D
• she definitely has long hair, but not as long as octavia’s.maybe it’d be like…dyed ombré blue?? two of the water signs already have black hair, so i don’t really think that a third would be necessary lmao
• i feel like she’d be the type to repeatedly dye her hair different colours, except that she always dyes hers a different shade of blue rather than a totally different colour.
• i still am super unsure on skin colours, but i was thinking that maybe she used to live near water and used to go out a lot, and therefore would be pretty suntanned.
• andddddd another blue-eyed person.
• i do think that the “innocent girl” anime trope might fit her kind of well! of course, that’s a sign that her character needs work, so i’m gonna need to actually start doing something productive.
• aside from that, though, she’s 100% fandom trash and spends way too much time on the internet.

civilian aquarius:

• he’s male!
• aquarius is an air sign (which seriously confused me the first time i found out about that, because aquarius’ symbol is literally the waterbearer???) and air makes me think of pale colours, so i think that civilian aquarius would have extremely pale blonde hair. not sure what hairstyle, but i didn’t visualize him with a manbun tbh
• uhhhh….light blue eyes? i think that’d go nicely with his hair
• he wears the stereotypical “nerd” glasses.
• i haven’t looked too much into the aquarian stereotype, but aquarius is viewed to be “alien” and kind of detached/odd, so i always thought of civilian aquarius as a bit of a dork (IN A GOOD WAY THO)
• to go with the alien thing, he likes space. and conspiracy theories.
• the entire zodiac team just eventually ends up referring to/calling aquarius “q”. just “q”, like as in the letter.
• also, he likes trivia facts and therefore always has on hand a ton of really weird facts and weirdly obscure knowledge. need to know how to say the word “winged” in russian or who invented the earmuffs? civilian aquarius probably knows.
• (“winged” in russian is Крылатый, and earmuffs were invented by chester greenwood.)

OOF
moving on!

ah, i’ve never heard of miraculous ladybug :”D (ladybug is an interesting theme. curious to see how that plays out in the show!)
when was this show released? i’ve been mildly busy the past year, and although me going on the internet usually ends up with me being in a totally different place than i started off in, i’ve never heard of miraculous ladybug/seen it anywhere. if it was a new show, then that might be the case. i’m terrible at staying updated on anything ever
also, since it’s a TV show, that might be the case for why i’ve never seen it around. i live in america, but i’m chinese (which, by the way, makes this zodiac story easy to write when it comes to the eastern zodiacs :”D i’m so pleased that one of the major zodiacs belongs to china, aha) so my family uses chinese tv cabling, and therefore i can only watch chinese TV shows/movies.

basically, chinese netflix. that’s literally what my family has.

anyhow, that might be why!
in that case, i think the wise move would be for me to scrap the weird love triangle thing (or love square now i guess) and find an alternative before my story literally turns into miraculous ladybug rewritten, but i’ve done so much story planning around that whole “love square” thing that i’m gonna need some serious writer power to fix this. i feel as though people might think i was copying off the show if i kept the love square, but i’d like to hear your thoughts on this too!

also, if i ever see her again over the summer, i’m definitely gonna ask that friend (remember how i said in the post about relationships how the whole demented love triangle thing was suggested to me by a friend?) who made that suggestion to me if she watches ML by any chance, now that i know it exists. maybe i’m just super lacking when it comes to inspiration, but i feel like a storyline involving two teenagers who fall for the other version of the person that’s in love with them is way too specific to be something you can just think of on the spot.

OOF
okay, moving on (again)

• yes, i think they would act a little different! i still need to keep their personalities relatively similar to their sign’s stereotype in and out of costume, but yes. especially with cecilia, who cares a lot about her appearance, i think some of the signs would actively try and create an image of their superhero selves.
• i don’t think that the personality change would be super evident for all of the characters, though. angela as a civilian is much more “out-of-the-way”; she isn’t necessarily a loner or avoiding social interaction, and just naturally keeps to herself. as virgo, though, somebody needs to keep the other eleven zodiacs under control, so that’s her job, unfortunately.
• you can imagine that virgo is louder and slightly bossier than angela, but otherwise pretty similar
• circling back to adrien, one of leo’s stereotypes is a serious ego issue. i really could not see adrien being egoistical and/or having the leadership qualities that leo traditionally possesses, though, so i decided that those qualities could belong to adrien’s superhero persona instead. there’s that trope of the child of two rich parents always being under pressure to be someone they are not, and i think adrien’s mom or dad would be quick to squash out traits like those, so they definitely wouldn’t be able to show up in adrien.
• also, apparently the zodiac sign leo seriously suffers with internal insecurity issues and putting on a mask to make people think they are more confident in themselves than they really are, so the “putting on a mask” part could be applied to adrien pretty easily, because he’s not really his “true self”, you know?
• i don’t know what ML adrien’s parents are like, but now i’ll have to start treading carefully when it comes to him because i honestly don’t need a carbon copy of a TV show character in my story.
• leo sounds somewhat like chat noir already. not quite sure how CN behaves (in terms of ego) but i’ll probably start putting my attention on trying to give adrien/leo a personality change as best as i can.

as for adrien’s parents, i decided on them being the owners of a makeup company!
i think i’ll stick with it because the “makeup” can link back to adrien’s “mask”, and makeup also helps connect adrien with cecilia (who likes makeup and probably uses adrien’s family’s products) and everest, for a reason i’ll explain later.

to be honest, i don’t know exactly how big their school would be. but, like any group of friends, sometimes a couple people will be closer and others not so much. i’m thinking that phoebe only has one class (maybe english?) where all twelve of the civilian zodiacs are together (of course, they don’t know that). in her other classes she might see the civilian zodiacs (like maybe angela and everest are in her science class, she passes by and chats with girl gemini in the hallways, and edith is in her gym class) but english is planned to be the only class where all twelve (or thirteen) of them are together. definitely a chaotic classroom

oof!! the after school activities thing is actually a pretty good idea (lmao how did i not think of this). i was in fact planning to give edith an online gaming partner, though! (there you go again, reading my mind. h o w). i think that edith would really enjoy arcades/video games, and also be extremely over-competitive with them; one idea i was thinking is that her online gaming partner is one of the eastern zodiacs, and that means they can actually come over for a visit when i bring in some of the eastern zodiacs later on. yay for internet friendships!

moving on (for the third time. i’m sorry, i really cannot think of a smooth way to transition from topic to topic)

i’ve recently managed to do a tiny bit of plot advancement along with some other misc details that aren’t really important. i’ll just make a quick list here to organize them better.
i’ve been pretty pleased with my progress, but looking back on it and seeing it all listed, none of this is really actual progress and it’s just 101% me overthinking.

WELL, HERE WE GO ANYWAY

misc details:

random -

• recently i’ve been thinking about how the zodiac charms will be initially transported to the holders’ rooms, and considering that the charms are jewelry, it would probably make sense for them to be contained in a jewelry box type thing. sooo, i’ve been trying to design a logo kind of thing for the top of that box!
• this next thing is so useless in plot but you know me. i love suffering over small details. anyways, octavia’s new quirk is that she really likes anything pomegranate flavored, because ancient greek mythology considered the pomegranate to be the “fruit of the dead”, and scorpio’s house (the eighth house) has the latin motto of mors, literally “death”.
• also, there’s that greek myth that persephone, wife of hades (who is the greek counterpart of pluto) consumed six pomegranate seeds while in the underworld, which forced her to stay in the underworld for six months every year.
• already also decided that octavia needs to have a somewhat big family; specifically, seven family members that are older than her. since octavia means “born eighth”, being the youngest of eight does technically mean she’s “born eighth” into the family.
• i didn’t plan on giving octavia any siblings, so i’m just going to give her an aunt, an uncle, some annoying cousins, and we’ll be all set!
• cecilia’s parents are lawyers. i originally thought that edith’s parents should be lawyers, but lawyers (kind of) uphold the law and libra is the scales, so yeah. lawyers it is!
• i’ve been working on trying to figure out what everybody’s bedroom would be like. no specific reason because i don’t see myself continually bringing up their bedrooms (and maybe i won’t even mention some of their bedrooms), but stuff like this is a good exercise for me to help characterize each person.

names -

• gave edith a middle name, just like octavia. edith’s middle name is marceline, meaning “dedicated to mars”, and mars is the ruling planet of aries. marceline does sound quite old-timey-ish and definitely doesn’t line up with edith’s sportiness and/or her mildly reckless personality, so i imagine that she probably hates her middle name.
• sorry, edith!
• also, i’ve got another name suggestion for civilian pisces: mina.
• mina (well, actually, it’s mīna, with the accent mark) is the sanskrit name for pisces. it, according to google, also means “love”, which is a really stereotypical name meaning, but it actually kind of works in my favor here!
• the greek myth surrounding pisces is that aphrodite and her son, eros, need to escape the monster typhon, who is descending upon mount olympus. there’s many different versions of what happens next - either aphrodite and eros turn into two fish and escape, or they turn into fish and two other fish help them escape, or they escape because two fish approach them and help them swim away to safety. whatever you prefer, it’s always two fish no matter what, so yeah.
• since aphrodite is the goddess of love, mina meaning “love” is actually pretty good! if i went for this method, then mina would need a sibling of some sorts to represent eros.
• but, uh, yeah. mina = sanskrit for pisces, also kind of references the greek myth surrounding pisces

last names -

• angela has a last name now! her last name is one of those hyphenated ones, and it’s vierge-maria, so her full name would be angela vierge-maria. i was trying to reference virgin mary in angela’s last name, because virgo’s symbol is literally a virgin.
• the reason why i didn’t go for “vierge marie” (the correct translation of virgin mary in french) or “jungfrau maria” (the correct translation of virgin mary in german) is because i wanted to show angela’s mixed heritage. switzerland has like four main languages, two of which are french and german (and i can’t remember the other two, whoops). so, vierge-maria is a combination of the french and german translations.
• everest also has a last name now! his last name is caulfield, so his full name would be everest caulfield. i actually have no idea what “caulfield” means, and instead, everest’s last name is taken from the journalist character named robert caulfield in the 1978 (1977? i don’t remember, it’s one of those) movie capricorn one. the movie’s title literally contains everest’s zodiac, so that’s why i took last names from it.
• no specific reason why i took everest’s last name from the journalist character, though. i just thought his last name sounded the best lmao
• google “capricorn one” if you’re curious!
• the gemini twins now also have last names! their last name is grayling, after the grayling butterfly. the grayling butterfly, with its wings fully spread, looks like a “traditional” butterfly, and “grayling” itself is an actual last name. again, this is because gemini has a strong tie to butterflies and whatnot.
• i’ve honestly kind of given up on giving the twins first names, so i think that girl gemini will be called polly and boy gemini will be called casey. polly grayling and casey grayling sounds like nice full names, personally.
• google “grayling butterfly” to see pictures of the actual butterfly!
• i have to say, finding this weirdly specific butterfly species has been the most annoying thing i’ve done so far for this story. i don’t know crap about butterflies, so what i did was just look up butterfly species on wikipedia and i combed through all of their pages on butterflies until i found something i liked lmaoooo
• you don’t know what hell is until you look for every single article wikipedia has on butterflies.
• my next mission is to find last names for octavia, casper, and adrien, considering that their family’s companies will contain last names in the company name.
• for octavia, i considered the last name aculeus, which, if you (again) google it, is the name for the stinger part of venomous animals (like the scorpion!). personally, though, i feel like octavia anastasia aculeus doesn’t sound that nice and octavia aculeus still sounds terrible. i think i might just give octavia a last name based on a scorpion or spider species instead, like how the twins have butterfly species last names.
• also, “aculeus jewelry” sounds like a terrible company name, so no.
• as for adrien, i did consider the last name leone. it means “lion” and is an actual last name of italian origin. however, it doesn’t start with an m, and i still want to keep that cute A.M and P.M initials that phoebe and adrien have…..
• adrien leone sounds really weird anyway
• for casper, i considered the last name mcguinness, which i actually really hate, because that’s not the kind of last name you’d associate with elegant rich people.
• the last name mcguinness is taken from an irish guy named martin mcguinness. long story short, this martin guy was the victim of a planned prosecution by the royal ulster constabulary (whatever the hell that means) and the whole thing was dubbed operation taurus.
• so you can kind see why i’m considering mcguinness now. all because of the name of the operation. no offense to martin, but i honestly wished he had a better last name.
• also, mcguinness wouldn’t really line up with casper’s ethnic background either, considering that casper isn’t irish. at all.
• casper mcguinness sounds kind of strange anyway
• casper has an older sister now, too! his sister’s name is demetria, meaning “follower of demeter”, and demeter is the goddess of the earth. also, taurus’s ruling planet (going by modern ruling planets) is ceres, which is literally the roman counterpart to greek goddess demeter.

tiny plot advancement details:

black cat’s civilian identity -

• i’ve been thinking that everest (capricorn) will be the character missing his mother/whose mother will be black cat. everest, in my story, has a fascination with technology and engineering, and is established to kind of be the tech guy for both his school and the zodiac team. well, everest’s got to get that bright mind from somewhere, so his mother could be a biomedical engineer or a scientist of some sort!
• maybe his mother worked for one of those companies that are really getting risky with their experiments, or like a mad scientist type except that she’s completely sane. this way, her sudden disappearance could be credited to an “experiment gone wrong” or something like that.
• if i’m not totally wrong, biomedical engineers (if everest’s mother turns out to be one) sometimes craft prosthetic limbs, so one way i could connect that is if one of the zodiacs loses a limb, which is really unpleasant, especially for a fifteen year old, so yeah, maybe no.
• ANYWAYS
• i’ve decided that his mother’s name will either be “katherine” or “bianca”.
• “katherine” is a pretty plain name (at least in my opinion - sorry if your name is katherine) compared to the names of the rest of my cast, but i think that’s perfect! you want the civilian identity to be someone ordinary, out-of-the-way, and not suspicious, which will help make everything harder for the zodiac crew to figure things out.
• i like katherine for that, but i also like it because a pet name/nickname of it is kitty.
• kitty. black cat.
• you can see how that connects.
• as for the name bianca, it’s just because i like irony. “bianca” means “white”, but she eventually turns into black cat.
• tbh, i prefer katherine, but i’d like to hear your feedback as well!
• civilian BC’s last name can also be easily twisted into a reference to her ultimate demise as a super villain.
• okay, so, i want her to keep her maiden name when she gets married (so everest and his dad both have the last name caulfield, but everest’s mom still keeps her last name).
• everest’s mother’s last name should mean the number thirty-three (33) except in a different language, like italian (e.g. i could use trenta-tre, italian for thirty-three, as a hyphenated last name for her)
• the main plot (or what causes it) of my story is that black cat is furious with the rat zodiac, who manages to foil BC’s plan at the last minute. when the rat zodiac departs for america, BC angrily follows her in order to get payback and begins to cause chaos in america, which forces the ZK to awaken a wheel of western zodiacs to deal with the problem.
• in the periodic table, thirty-three is the atomic number for arsenic. arsenic is the main ingredient for some types of rat poisons (google “arsenic rat poison”)
• i think you can see what i’m trying to get at! even BC’s last name shows how much she hates the rat zodiac lmao
• if i was super hardcore, then i would try to make everest’s mother’s initials be A.S, because the symbol for Arsenic is As. ….maybe i will
• all i have to do now is figure out her profession, and also figure out how i can make “thirty-three” sound like a plausible last name. katherine trenta-tre sounds absolutely terrible, and so far i have yet to find a way to put thirty-three in her last name without it being extremely obvious.
• there’s some other things i did surrounding everest’s family, including some grandparents who’ll end up being kind of important, along with a “cursed” family tree on his mother’s side, but that’ll take a while to explain, so i’ll throw it into the next post if i can!

adrien’s Tragic Backstory™ -

• adrien is adopted, and his two current parents aren’t his birth parents.
• his birth parents died in a house fire when he was younger :”D
• i think this is just me overthinking again, but i thought it was a good idea to have adrien’s birth parents die in a fire specifically because years later, when their son becomes a superhero, his zodiac is leo.
• out of all three fire signs, leo would technically be the “purest embodiment” of fire if we’re looking at ruling planets/stars here. sagittarius is ruled by jupiter, and aries by mars, but leo is ruled by the sun.
• so, his parents die because of fire and years later he becomes the embodiment of fire
• i just think it’s a good connection, y’know?
• anyways, adrien’s current mom and dad are jerks.
• i love giving my characters parental issues

anyways, that’s where i’m going to draw this post to close, because it’s already way too long.
if you got confused halfway through this post, then please ask me questions b/c i know i change topics WAY too fast and i’m just generally terrible at explaining. i’m really sorry for the extremely vague character descriptions :”)
i’m also excited to say that i spent the beginning of my summer break writing, and i actually have the first chapter of my story done. technically, i should move onto writing the second chapter, but i always reread the first one, find something wrong with it, do a ton of editing, and there goes my energy for the day. anyhow, though, if you’d like to read it, i can post it here! (unfortunately it’s like 6000 words so i hope you really like reading)

this post is not edited, so i’m sorry for any typos!!

• As a scorpio I can confirm that we have no emotions. None. We are all secretly robots plotting to take over the world.
• We are also mind readers.
• Yay for Switzerland! Two of my best friends in the whole wide world are Swiss (don’t know what that has to do with anything but yay for Swiss people)! I really is a very Angela kind of country.
• Honestly I think sometimes diversity is overemphasised. Like yes, it's definitely important, but it's also important for it to make sense and not be shoehorned in for diversity points. Idk.
• Civilian Aquarius is my spirit animal
• Miraculous Ladybug – honestly I’m just very confused about any of the show’s background. It aired in 2015? But it also aired in Korea before it aired in France even though it’s a French show? No one really knows which country the next episode will air in first? The character’s lips are synched to the English dub so it’s more marketable in the US? It’s honestly just a mess and I love it so much.
  I just binged it on youtube. I don’t have cable/Netflix/anything really, I just use my dubious internet skills and a very net-savvy sister who has next to no inhibitions.
  It’s a really interesting concept, with the two main heroes themed after a Ladybug (hence… Miraculous Ladybug) and a Black Cat (eeeeeey). They have the powers of creation and destruction respectively, but also good luck/bad luck?? I honestly don’t know what’s canon and what’s fanon at this point.
  To be honest for a second I thought that you knew the show and were deliberately taking elements from it into your own narrative, because a lot of it does match. I’m sorry for doubting you there! I really don’t know about the love square thing (like whether or not to keep it). It’s not like ML has the monopoly on it or anything, but it does mean that it would be harder to write and not constantly feel like you’re copying. Obviously there are ways that it could be made original but I guess it just adds an additional hurdle for you as a writer? Idk. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you mentioned just having them be casual friends in civilian life before the love square idea happened. Which would be fine too.
  This is so odd, but actually ML Adrien’s dad is rich too and he’s very inhibited by his dad’s expectations of him. I don’t want to constantly compare those two because your Adrien is his own separate character, but basically:
  1. ML Adrien’s dad (Gabriel Agreste) is a fashion designer whose wife recently disappeared (still confusion on that one).
  2. Adrien is a teen model, the face of the Agreste Brand.
  3. He’s been homeschooled for a very long time, trapped in his house, until the series of events happened which made him Chat Noir. That gave him enough confidence to try to go to school on his own. In the end his dad relented and he’s now allowed to go to school as long as he keeps up with his other duties (photoshoots, fencing, Chinese, piano). [I am terrible at summarizing. I swear it’s more interesting in canon.]
  4. A lot of his characterization is “wanting to be normal” ™ and “wanting to have friends” ™.
     So I don’t think Leo Adrien is necessarily a carbon copy of him at all, now that I think about it. Especially his Tragic Backstory ™ would set him apart from ML Adrien and his characterization.
• I apparently can’t count. 12 zodiacs. Sorry about that.
• Honestly my first thought when Edith got a middle name was one of her friends using it when they're really upset with her like Edith Marceline [i have no idea what her last name is sorry] get your act together
• Yay for internet friendships with the eastern zodiacs!
• Yay for pomegranates!
• Yay for bedrooms!
• [Yay for me not knowing how to respond so just saying “yay for” to acknowledge that I’ve read it and think it’s excellent]
• So if pisces (I was going to write her new name but I’m too lazy to figure out how to do the accent mark)gets a Sanskrit name, would that give her an Indian/Hindu background? [One of my big struggles when it comes to naming my characters (aka the reason I barely ever name them properly) is that it almost says more about the character’s parents than it does about them. So even if I find a name I really like, I always overthink it and wonder where her parents found the name and why they like it and stuff. Idk it’s probably just me]
• I'm trying to think of any questions to ask here but I got nothing
• (Honestly Aculeus sounds like a fancy name for a really common disease that people use when they want you to think that they have something serious when they really don’t. Like they’ll get all dramatic and say that they have aculeus but it turns out that it just means a headache or something.) (That was random) (ignore that)
• The Royal Ulster Constabulary.
• Just… the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
• Whatttttt.
• Update: I figured out that it doesn't, in fact, say ulcer like I originally thought it did. So Northern Irish people are suddenly 80% less ridiculous.
• On the other hand, I just spent half an hour of my life convinced that Northern Ireland had a police force named after a medical condition so that was a thing.
• Katherine sounds like an excellent name for a villain, but if Everest ends up having an Italian background Bianca might be more appropriate?
• I’d love to read the first chapter!

[Once again, apologies that this is so disjointed.] [But it's not essay lengths for a change, at least]

• y’know, if i could be a scorpio and have no emotions, that’d be great. might save me a lot of hassle
• your description of ML’s irregular upload dates/schedule honestly made me think of “where’s waldo” except instead of trying to find waldo, you’re trying to find which country the next ML episode will air in
• personally, that sounds like absolute hell for the fandom of ML. like i understand that the creators are human beings with lives and they need to take their time to produce a good episode, but i also get mildly irritated whenever a show doesn’t have something close to a release schedule. like when will the next episode come out?? tomorrow? next week? next year? when my first child is born? 3018?????
• oof, i didn’t know you could find it on youtube!! :0 to be honest, i’m not quite sure if i’ll watch it even then. my soul is divided into too many fandoms and pretty soon i won’t have a soul. fandoms have consumed me whole. i can’t afford to get emotionally invested in MORE fictional characters
• hey, i never even noticed the ladybug/good luck and black cat/bad luck thing! that’s really clever, i’m a sucker for couples who symbolize opposite themes (and that’s literally how i picked the zodiacs cancer and leo for my story, b/c cancer = ruled by moon and leo = ruled by sun)
• i’ll see what i can do about the love square shenanigans! i might just take a look at how marinette behaves around adrien and compare that to how i plan for phoebe to behave around adrien, and alter anything that’s too similar :”D
• a Tragic Backstory™ always fixes everything. good to know that leo adrien isn’t totally ML adrien!
• i’m gonna steal your idea about edith’s friends hollering her full name at the top of their lungs when they’re annoyed with her. that’s perfect
• i’m not quite sure, actually! mina would have more symbolism than marcelle or mira, but i feel like marcelle and mira sound much better. according to google, mina is a name of german origin apparently?? so i’m not even sure what that would make pisces’ ethnic background be
• i don’t necessarily think that your ethnic background always lines up with your name. my first name irl is of french origin, but i’m chinese.
• to be honest, i never really considered that the name of a child also says something about their parents. this is probably a terrible habit but i never really focus on parents that much when i’m writing
• ROYAL ULCER CONSTABULARY
• that sounds like something i would do. i misread things a lot and then i get really confused
• i think i might end up going with bianca! it has more meaning than katherine anyway, soooooo…..

woot! here’s the first chapter of my story. i still need to polish some things up, but anyhow, critique the hell out of it. be as harsh as you want lmaooooo

(also - i have absolutely no idea on how to link google docs. if this link doesn’t work, please let me know ;—; )
it is hella long (at least for a first chapter) so uh. i hope you’re really passionate about reading

So apparently it's a private link?? Hopefully I just requested permission to view it (I may also have incurred the wrath of an unknown internet deity and condemned my laptop to eternal viruses, who knows) and you should be getting an email about it?
Sorry about that. I have no idea what I'm doing like 100% of the time.
[About ML - definitely don't feel the need to watch it. I'm just one of those hopeless nerds who drag their fandoms into literally every conversation ever, but people usually learn to deal with and just ignore me. I have also split my soul into more fandoms than is healthy (we're all Voldemort, deep deep down, creating Horcruxes left and right) so I totally understand that you wouldn't want to be dragged further into the pits of hell and despair.
Speaking of which, it's honestly quite ironic, but I think if there were a fandom for Stars in Transition I'd be in it. Please, I already am. I've got the headcanons, the irrational need to know everything about it, all I need to do is start drawing fanart and we're all set. So yeah. know that you've already dragged one soul (or, well, fragment thereof if we're being honest) into your legion of the undead, I guess?
Anyway, if you do plan to look up Marinette acting around Adrien I hope you're a fan of secondhand embarrassment because you will get it. It's not pretty.]

i have absolutely no idea on how to use google docs lmao.
this is the link from before, but now in the google docs app, it says that “link sharing is on” and anybody with the link can view the document. try this one i guess?? ;—;

DID I JUST ACCIDENTALLY KICK YOU OUT I’M SO SORRY. i saw the icon under “currently viewing” and idk what kind of thought process led me to tap it but i did. IKM SORRY

….. Make that two souls dragged down down into your legion of fandom demise. I just pulled an all-nighter and discovered this post two and a half hours ago, and read the whole thing (minus the 15-page chapter)… No, I do not plan sleep well. I have a few things to say about this BEAUTIFUL story:
1) Did I mention BEAUTIFUL? How about fantastic? Magnificently crafted? OR just plain supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
2) HOW THE HECK ARE YOU NOT EVEN IN HIGH SCHOOL YET?!?!!? This is so in-depth and powerful, and…… COMPLEX…. Dude, this is something worthy of J.K. Rowling in depth and meanings and EVERY detail lined up and planned. I am 21 and in college. I am EXTREMELY impressed.
3) My name is also Angela. This name is almost NEVER used in stories except as a best-friend/side-character-who-often-dies. I AM SO PROUD SOMEONE HAS USED IT AS A MAIN CHARACTER. Very excited. :)
3) I'm also Aquarius. I'm slightly miffed at having no real character in this yet. However I too, know nothing about Aquarius, except that we are a blend of literally everything. I totally understand the problem of writing traits. I basically morph into different people depending on the people I hang out with, or the day, or how busy I am… Yes.
4) But seriously though, I would be ECSTATIC to hear more on this story. And yes, especially the mini-essays of information with every post… though… binge-reading them all in two hours was NOT a good idea. XD
5) PLEASE WRITE MORE THINGS AND I WOULD BE GLAD TO HELP WITH ANYTHING IF YOU WANT IT. <3

SHESJENWHSROSMEIWMAUWGEBAP

eeeeeEEEEEEEEEE

1) first of all, thank you so much?? i read what you wrote and i actually squealed. like, attract-the-confused-concern-of-a-local-sentient-life-form (aka, my mom) squeal. this is so nice? and honestly, i cannot believe you read through all of that. that takes serious will-power, girl.
2) oof. to be honest, i’m quite glad i’m not in high school (it sounds like absolute hell, from what i’ve heard) and i can’t believe you think i’m a worthy comparison to j.k rowling. i’m flattered, thank you so much! also, thank you for your compliment on the details. i’ve literally killed whatever’s left of my sanity on this story, researching things like butterflies for the gemini twins, name meanings, and etc. i’m really happy to know that the sanity drain wasn’t for nothing!
3) i also can’t believe that i managed to reel in the interest of someone in college?? i’d honestly never think that my story skills would be able to attract anybody outside of my age group. i’m just going to say my age to put things in perspective: i’m thirteen years old! i’m going into eighth grade next year.
4) SO THAT MEANS ATTRACTING THE INTEREST OF SOMEONE IN COLLEGE IS A FAIRLY BIG DEAL.
5) i hope angela vierge-maria is to your satisfaction! (although, it must be extremely weird reading a character with the same name as you. that never happens to me because my name is uncommon, but i imagine it’d feel weird.) angela is characterized much better now than she was in the piece of writing in my original post. honestly, i hate that piece now.
6) now that one of the souls i’ve abducted into my legion of fandom demise (that’s a hilarious term, by the way. i legitimately laughed out loud when i read that) is an aquarius, i promise i’ll start putting more attention on him!
7) i honestly just can’t believe that someone genuinely likes my story this much?? like what kind of sorcery??

if you’d like (and hopefully google docs will cooperate with me) i’ve got two small pieces of writing on angela to make up for a blatant lack of aquarius in my story so far. if you’d like to see them (or maybe you’d just like to get through my ridiculously long first chapter first) let me know!

warning: they’re unedited and also they’re kind of random. whoops

You're welcome! If I'm honest, I was about read to go to bed when I saw this post. I looked at it and started reading for a sec with no intention of finishing it, then found the character was named Angela, and that I LIKED this character. Not just her personality, but how she was written. I liked the slow consumption of the pencil throughout the story, and the bit about messy binders and handwriting and a sticky note that was SOMEWHERE. I GOT that. In completion. I GOT that it was representative of her slow, crumbling sanity, that her clearly once-OCD organization was overtaken by hurried little notes and crammed papers everywhere. That was ME. I LOVED IT.

Anyway, gushing asides:
1)High school isn't so bad. It was pretty great for me. (Well, up until Senior year when the stress set in).
2)And trust me, sanity is lame. The best and most entertaining people are absolute nuts. Go for it. It takes the mark of the insane to be a genius. (Also, I've been tossing around an idea for a story in my head for the past couple of years. I've been in need of names and possible plot destinations deep enough for what I'm trying to convey. [Hence the years.] If you had time it would be cool if I could run it by you for possible idea details?)
3) Don't think that just because someone is in college, they don't enjoy cool stories. The younger you are, the better ideas you have. And college kids are just a bunch of kids running around doing slightly more adult kids stuff. I kid you not, a bunch of people I don't really know and I all got together and played hide-and-seek-tag for like two hours in the middle of the day on campus because we were bored. Also, I have had this plan for years, that if I ever become the head of some major company, I am literally going to hire a bunch of small children to create cool ideas. The younger you are, the less your imagination is bound by things like reality, and people telling you you can't do things. Imagination is great.
4) My sister is turning 13 in three days! That's pretty cool!
5) I really like Angela and her name meanings!!! It's only slightly weird seeing your own name running around on a page, okay really weird, but that's fine. I'm super excited to read this chapter! (Hopefully tonight.)
6) I'd love to see any and all of the new things you write! YesyesYES!!! Don't worry about being unedited. ALL of my stuff unedited. I right everything in concepts. Everything is random to me. XD