Nov 2023 Update And Notes

Damn only previously posted one thing this month on this blog and it's almost over. Guess, just to inform and fill things up, I will write out an update.

So with the absolute lack of DeviantArt for me now, and people flocking away from that site for understandable reasons, this AU will no longer be made/updated in mind with DeviantArt anything at all. Just gonna move on from there completely as things will now absolutely be detached from there.

Moving on from that, I might not do anything with the werepoodle diaries anymore. Mainly because I don't wanna just limit literature to Betty Boop's first person anymore and the only reason for the werepoodle diaries in the first place was because I couldn't find a way to write out stuff in third person without it coming out as a mess when starting things up. After writing some things out with the diaries, I feel like I don't have that issue anymore and don't wanna limit literature to them. I also just can't see Betty writing in it that consistently. I may also come up with a plot explanation to why she isn't using it anymore, cause I don't want it to feel like some sort of retcon as if she never used it at all when I continue writing. So from now on, literature can be written in first, second and third person. I'm just no longer doing the werepoodle diaries thing.

I guess I will also say, if the "about" page for the AU didn't make it clear enough before, that while the story has continuity it can fluctuate or as I call it, the world of Betty Boop's Grim World is "continuity-flux." I just want an equal mix between there being enough story but things not being all too rigid. I do love the randomness and absurdity of the good ol' classic Fleischer cartoons. But it's not merely just, the continuity has fluctuation with no explanation within universe. In fact, there are gonna be several wacky in-universe explanations for it. You shall wait and see, but I love it when stories that are both "random/bizarre/wacky" yet very story-driven have crazy ass continuity/canon but have neat in-universe explanations for it.

I may elaborate more on this for another post, but I mentioned in the DA description of one artwork, that you obviously cannot see now, that one of the influences for Betty Boop's Great Grim World was the Dynamite Comics which tried to do a story-driven Betty Boop universe with more firm continuity. I have uh, extremely mixed feelings on the Dynamite Comics, that again, I may elaborate on in the future, but after I read them I just had to take a story-driven/firmer continuity something with Betty Boop in my own hands. The comics were short lived and had a premise/plot/important story element, whatever you call it, they were setting up and it got canceled before they could get to the actual story. Even if I had no idea if it would end up good or bad, it was awfully upsetting, as it was something promising "Betty Boop with more continuity and a story" and it did a lot of irrelevant things and got canceled right at the ending of an issue where they implicated they were actually gonna get to the story in the next one.

Before that, my own ideas and plans for a Betty Boop AU of mine, that I've been planning for a while, were far more randomized. Ideas that had a sense of "continuity" had more focus on the idea of something "meta" like the characters being cartoons and knowing they are cartoons and a whole bunch of meta stuff rather than primarily sticking to in-universe shenanigans. But after reading and finishing the Dynamite Comics? Man oh man did that thing REALLY shift my approach and I really had to go; "Goddamit! I really gotta do this myself! The idea of Betty Boop with more continuity/story and a premise is and would be so cool! I am so mad that this very concept didn't go to complete fruition and potential well! Now I gotta do it!" And that's how it went...

Yeah. Of course, there will be stories that are more randomized than others. Love me some "random bullshit go" type shit. But yeah... thank my rage with what ended up with the Dynamite comics for me thinking about Betty Boop with a more defined continuity and in-universe narrative. 😅