This is a General Hospital fanfiction archive that concentrates on the pairing of Jason Morgan and Elizabeth Webber. You will also find a lot of stories that feature Sonny and Carly Corinthos, Patrick Drake and Robin Scorpio, and Nikolas Cassadine and Emily Quartermaine. The stories are written completely by me, Melissa (LissieLove) and features novels, short stories, and other GH-related material. It has been online since September 19, 2002.
If you don't like Jason and Elizabeth as a pairing or you have any fondness for the character of Franco, then you should probably click the back button and continue on your way. Happy travels. I hate Franco. He is a lying, violent, sociopathic piece of shit, and I hope this character gets yeeted into the sun. Thank you.
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Your Update Link: If Wishes Came True, Part 2
I, uh, think I need to sit down this week and organize the episode tags onto their own page because they’re clearly part of the same universe and all of them kind of happen as cut scenes from GH — nothing says this isn’t happening in the background, I mean, LOL. I just…I have issues.
Your Update Link: Desperate Measures, Part 17
Not a lot to report today. Yesterday, I got a bit burnt out and took the afternoon off. Then, despite going to bed at a decent time for a change, I woke up with a massive sinus headache that is still lingering a little bit. I think it’s honestly because I’m staying inside so much, and I need to get my dad to change the filter on my central air.
Desperate Measures will be wrapping up next Wednesday, on August 19, and Darkest Before the Dawn on August 20. I’ll be back August 31 with the new round of flash fictions and the schedule. I have a lot of ideas so I’ll be letting my Patreons vote on the top two or three.
Your Update Links: Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 13 | If Wishes Came True
New Channel Videos: Mad World, Part 5 | Fool Me Twice, Part 3 and Part 4
Happy Thursday! I have a lot to get to in this post, so if you want to go ahead and just go read the updates and come back — that’s probably a good idea, LOL. We’re down two flash fiction series, so that’s good news. Both stories have about three parts left, so I think they’ll be wrapping up next Wednesday. I’m still taking off that next week to work out revision ideas and decide on the new series and schedule.
I finally finished the last episode tag in the trio I promised last week. This picks up midway through Friday, August 7’s show when Jason has had his motorcycle accident. I have some thoughts about a tag or two this week, but I want to see how the rest of the week works out in today and tomorrow’s episodes. If Wishes Came True is now available, and could probably fit into the universe of the other two tags, Strong Enough and This Is Me Trying. None of them are specifically connected but they don’t really contradict each other either. I also finally updated the Alternate History, Alphabetical List, and Recent Updates page so yay for me on that score! I’m hoping to get back to the facelift, but for a variety of reasons it’s been a struggle.
I’m finally getting the video posts going. Mad World’s latest post has a transcript, but it’s messy, lol. Fool Me Twice has two new videos, posted on Tuesday and today, going over the final bits of discovery. I’ll be linking them this way going forward — each page will have the embedded video, a playlist table of contents, a quick online summary and transcript. The transcript takes the longest, but I’m going to carve out some time this weekend to deal with them. There will be an official channel page at some point. I hope you enjoy!
In my final bit of news — Mad World, Book 3 is officially being separated into two books. As I was working on the beta draft yesterday, it became very clear to me that I had two narratives that are deeply interrelated, but still different stories. I have organized the new Book 3 — it’s 23 chapters. The new Book 4 is still in the process of being reorganized. It’s currently at 25 chapters. We’re kind of looking at the Book 1 and 2 situation — Book 1 opened the world and set me up for Book 2, and I feel like that’s what Book 3 is doing. It’s dealing with the fallout of Books 1 & 2 while setting us up for the final confrontations of Book 4.
What does this mean for scheduling? I’m not entirely positive at this time other than the fact that the October 6 date is set in stone for some sort of general release. I might drop Book 3 on October 6, then Book 4 in December — because then when Fool Me Twice Book 1 comes out in February, it’ll be a new book every other month. I might do a poll as I get through the beta draft and get some feedback on whether or not that works for you.
I’ll have more information for you in next week’s vlog post as I finish up restructuring the beta draft and get started on line edits for Book 3.
So this is the new format of my video posts, which I’m going to be working on when I have a chance over the next few weeks. I found a service that transcribes videos really cheap ($12 for two hours of footage) but the transcripts have to be cleaned up. This was my first attempt at cleaning up a transcript, lol. If anyone would like to take a stab at cleaning it up further, have at it. I didn’t want to spend my whole day working on it, to be honest, and, wow, my speaking style is…all over the place. I’ll work on that.
Eventually, every entry in a series will have a post — so the table of contents will be listed below, but doing the backlist is a lot less of a priority at the moment. I’ll have Fool Me Twice’s two posts done tomorrow for the update. This will also be the only time I cross list the video posts in the Site New update. In the future, the post will be ready and linked in the daily updates. It will also have a section on the site. It just wasn’t ready for this morning. Hopefully this helps!
Also featured in Camp NaNoWrimo, April 2020.
Transcript
(please excuse messiness — it’s my first time, lol, and my speaking style is very…all over the place)
Welcome back to Crimson Glass on YouTube. So this is part 5 of Writing Mad World. I finished the first draft yesterday. I want to get that out of the way and say now. I’m pretty excited about it. I wasn’t sure if I would need to make another one of these before I actually got into revisions, but I thought well, I’m making a video about Fool me Twice Today. Let’s just get it done. So it’s done.
It ended up being 653 pages 235 thousand words. Um, it’s 41 chapters. I don’t know. I lost count. That’s the reason I don’t know how many chapters technically it is because I have 90 overall chapters in the trilogy and the first 50 of them are in the first two books. So I’m going to say yeah, that’s probably about 39 to 40 chapters and it’ll probably be more by the time we’re done. So the one–the thing I really want to talk about in this video is writing an ending to the story and approaching material with an eye of reminding yourself who’s in charge. So and this is a lesson that for some reason I have to learn like over and over and over again and I really can’t tell you why.
So what happened is that I got to Monday and I have been reading a chapter a day and I was like, yes, we’re going to finish I might not get the epilogues done on time. But that’s alright. They can be finished during the beta draft that really it. They’ re just wrap-ups. It’s really not that big deal and then I finished on Monday and I realized on Tuesday. Oh my God. I don’t really want to write the ending of the story and I couldn’t decide at first if it was just like I’m really tired. I’ve been living with the story now for 66 days at that point because I started like daily on June 1st,
and I couldn’t decide at the problem if I was having was just that I was tired because sometimes you know, you get to the end of the project you get tired, so I try to like open it up and look at it and I started to write the first scene. I’m just like I really don’t want to I don’t want to do it and I think it’s because I realized that in order for the ending to work the way I had originally outlined because some things have changed-because Elizabeth was not going to be living in a house that they were supposed to have moved during Mad World Book 3, but it didn’t end up happening and never was never a moment on the page where it made sense for that to happen and they end up not having a huge time Jump. I was going to skip six weeks at some point and that I’m not doing that.
So for a variety of reasons Elizabeth is still in the–Jason Elizabeth are both in the penthouse at the end of the story. And that matters because I need something to have happened to Elizabeth that can’t happen unless she’s an idiot and I really can’t stand when a character does something dumb like, you know, when you’re watching a movie and your kid the characters just starts like she’s like, like don’t go upstairs. You know what you did to open that door and don’t look up like Don’t Look Under the Bed like, you know, your starts screaming at the screen at your character. That’s how I felt. Like people would be thinking about Liz and Carly at this point and I was just like this is not working and, again I was not entirely sure if it was not working because I was just really tired and so my like my enthusiasm was just gone and if that’s true, like I just got to power through it and get it done.
But if it’s because of material’s not working, which is the same problem I was having in July which is the same thing I talked about in the last video, like, literally I just talked about how you got to make this decision. So I talked to Ang in DMs and I was like, I really hate the ending. I’m paraphrasing– but I was just like this is not working. I really hate it. She’s like what’s the problem was like well in order for the end of the work people they have to be stupid. And the this thing–this can’t happen if Liz is in the penthouse. She’s like, okay, why doesn’t Liz leave the house? Why does she have to be in the penthouse?
I thought well, she wouldn’t leave because you know the way the story works is–it’s a Monday in the story and Cam’s just come home from the hospital on Friday and he was a premature baby. So, you know, she’s he needs a ton of care of right, you know hands-on and Jason would be in Crimson Point. So like he’s not going to leave him alone with a babysitter to go have lunch. Like she’s not after the story I just told–not that she can’t do that–but I’m just saying it’s been it’s been less than four days since he came home. She’s not going to leave him with a babysitter just to go out and have lunch–like she’s just not there the point in her life.
That got me thinking — does Jason have to go to Crimson Point? Why can’t he be the one that stays home? After that I sat down my restructure my final chapters based on, you know, Liz leaves Jason stays. That was Tuesday.
I wrote two chapters hour and a half and then yes, Wednesday. I wrote the two chapters. And then yesterday I finished and I wrote the last chapter and it’s all done and it was just like that simple. It was just a matter of and for some reason being very very psychic and knowing exactly the right question to ask me. And me taking a moment to realize just because I outlined it some way–I mean, there are a couple of things that do get lost by it not being the way I anticipated. There’s a Michael thing that I was hoping–I really would have liked to have come full circle on but it’s okay that it’s not there. I think overall the things I get by making the change are better than the things I lose and I can still look for a way for that to be full circle later on, like in revisions. I was really–until I made that choice to make that change–I was really thinking about Why don’t I just write what I originally have outlined then I’ll fix it and revisions but in by fixing them like I would just I would basically have to rewrite it. And I’m just not in the mood right now to create more work for myself.
Like it’s one thing to write something get to the end of it and think that didn’t 100% work or een 90% work. Like that’s the way I feel about the middle part of the story–the middle 17 chapters that were written first but ended up being in the middle because they don’t fit now–I know how much work they’re going to need. So the last thing I want to do is create more. For myself, I don’t ever want to go into a scene thinking it’s alright, if it doesn’t work. I’ll fix it in revisions. I’d rather have that attitude after I’m done. Like there’s a Laura and Carly scene. I was really I wrote it early early in the whole draft and I was like, I thought that might be a relationship I could play with but they’re ended up not really being room for it. So when I go back through edits, I’m probably gonna end up removing that scene and that’s okay. Like I like that scene. I’ll probably post it somewhere isn’t it as a deleted scene, but I you know, it doesn’t really fit with the overall story ended up telling so that’s different though, because that was me playing around with that characters characters in a scene hat isn’t bad. It just isn’t going to fit the narrative I can cut that but it’s another thing to go into a scene thing. Yeah, this is not going to work, but I’m going to fix it in reisions. Anyway, like I don’t want to create that work for myself.
So mad world book 3 is done. It’s going to be released to the well done. I used on so subjectively it’s going into revisions. So it is Friday the day that I am filming that you guys are probably seen this on Saturday if This video worked because this is now the third time I filmed at the first time I messed up the audio. I’m not great at this. I’m using a new camera today as you can probably tell from the quality. So apologies and I’m messing up where I’m supposed to look because I have to look somewhere different now–apologies for that as well. I am not a professional, you know.
I’m taking the next few days off Friday and Saturday and on Sunday and Monday, I’m going to reread the whole thing and make like large scale notes about what are specific stories I missed. What are some specific things I want to do and then I’m going to go through a chapter. By chapter breaking it down making like I’m going to plant it chapter by chapter and then go through a chapter by chapter.
So I’ll check in with you guys next week because I should be kind of closer to getting into a full-scale edit. I really am thinking that the first 15 chapters are probably just clean up go for consistency–Spellings, typos just stuff like that. There’s a couple of points. I want to hit a little harder. It’s the middle chapters that are probably gonna need the most work and I think that I’m going to make sure that I have at least 17 days of just working on them. Alright, so today is August 7th. I’m taking off today and tomorrow so it looks fresher on the 9th and the 10th. I’m going to reread and then by the 16th, I want to start working. But now that I’m looking at that–that only gives me two full weeks to rewrite all those chapters in case I need to rewrite all those chapters.
You know what though? If I have to take part of September to go through the beta draft. That’s actually okay because I’m end up taking a whole week from revisions this point. So yeah, so that’s the goal is August 31st. If I don’t make it it is what it is. It’s okay. The better my beta draft is the easier that third draft is so the October 6th 8th shouldn’t shouldn’t change a lot. I’m not really I see no reason with the first draft being done in August whiBye.le you guys Not have it in October 6. All right, so that is part 5 of Writing Mad World. I will see you guys next week with part 6 in which we will have a better sense of how much work I’ve created for myself.
Your Update Link: Whatever It Takes, Part 16
Another series is finished and moves into revision. As I said last week, I wanted to finish all current series in progress, then take off the last week of August to get ready for the new school year. Once I know if I’ll be back to work full-time in September, I’ll work out a schedule and unveil the next set of series, one of which will include the sequel to Darkest Before the Dawn. I’m still working on revision ideas for An Everlasting Love — Mad World has eaten all my energy, lol. That’s another reason I want to take off the last week of August.
I started working on the beta draft for Mad World and we’re getting closer to the idea of splitting this into two books. I’m pretty sure I’ll know for sure after I complete today’s work. Each day, I’m taking ten chapters and looking over notes, adding scenes and chapters where they need to be. I’ve added plans for about six or seven scenes in existing chapters and then two more chapters — on top of at least five or six chapters I know have to be added to today’s batch of ten. That’s only the first half of the book — you see why I might be splitting it.
See you guys tomorrow!
Your Update Link: Desperate Measures, Part 17
Good morning! It’s been a very annoying 24 hours. I was supposed to have Zoom job interview yesterday and then I realized that the principal said Monday, August 11. I was working on this week’s Bullet Journal spread, and uh, it turns out Monday is August 10. So at 10 AM I suddenly found myself wondering — when exactly does this principal think our interview is? There I was, all washed, dressed, and ready — and it’s today instead. The universe is against me.
In other news — that third episode tag isn’t quite ready and I’m annoyed because it was supposed to follow Friday’s show with Jason’s accident and will make much less sense now. Luckily, through reading your comments, it looks like 85% of you are not watching currently so you probably won’t notice. Heh. I’ll try to work on it today and get it finished. It’s my favorite of the three, so I’m definitely writing it.
MAD WORLD! I finally finished reading the draft yesterday but it took FOREVER, lol. I didn’t finish until after 9 and I had to get to bed to get for my interview. I’m going to sit down today and start sketching out the big changes I wanna make. As you guys know, this story is ALREADY a beast with forty chapters and 235k. Based on my initial read, I’m going to have to add anywhere from 5-7 to chapters.
I’m still not sure how it’s going to affect publication. I was pleasantly surprised that the middle chapters I was sure would need the most work aren’t that bad — the first few chapters need more work — but the rest of the chapters need tweaks and additions. That makes me feel a lot better about getting a full beta draft done on time.
For Fool Me Twice, I spent some time on Saturday and Sunday working on it, but not yesterday. Today, I’ll be getting back to my daily 25 minutes sprints and hopefully adding a second one to spend a full 50 minutes on discovery.
There are two videos on the channel that got uploaded, but I want to put separate posts with their text highlights. My schedule is getting a little crunched, to be honest, because this interview is on a different day than I was expecting. The only reason I can fit Flash Fiction in today is because I’m washing my hair at 9 AM, then letting it lightly dry until after Flash Fic because it’ll be faster to dry it. I’ll be back with them later.
Your Update Links: Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 12 | This Is Me Trying
Happy Monday! Sorry for not posting the episode tag yesterday. I woke up SUPER late because I accidentally stayed up until 3 AM on Saturday night (LISTEN I AM AN ADULT I DO WHAT I WANT). I knew I had to really focus on getting as far as possible in rereading Mad World, so I just put it off and then never got a chance to get back to it. I still need to add it to the Alphabetical List & Alternate History page. I’ll do that today.
Like Strong Enough, I included an in depth recap. It’s not exactly tied to Strong Enough, but you could see them existing in the same universe. It’s not Jason/Elizabeth — more of an explanation of the Jake shares debacle, LOL, and getting Elizabeth and Sam in a scene together. I hope you enjoy This Is Me Trying. I should have the third tag, If Wishes Came True, tomorrow or Wednesday. (And yes, I’ve been listening to a lot of Taylor Swift’s folklore, why do you ask?)
I’m working on rereading Mad World today, so that’s obviously the priority. I have lots of thoughts, but I want to wait until I’m done rereading to share them. I’ll see you guys tomorrow!
Your Update Links: Whatever It Takes – Part 15 | Strong Enough
That’s right – I have a surprise ficlet (Strong Enough) for you guys and even more interesting news — it’s the first of at least three stories I was inspired to write by watching four episodes of General Hospital this week.
I want to take a moment for you to digest that statement because I am as shocked and appalled by it as you are. I watched FOUR episodes of GH yesterday and was IMMEDIATELY inspired to write episode tags. Just so there’s no misunderstanding — these episodes were not from 1999, 2002, 2006, or even 2012 — They were episodes that aired August 3-6, 2020.
THIS YEAR. I WAS INSPIRED BY THIS YEAR‘S SHOW. I AM VERY CONFUSED.
Tomorrow and Monday, I will update with the next two episode tags. I did a quick Twitter poll last night to choose the order because I honestly had no preference — I WANT TO WRITE THEM ALL. YOU GUYS WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME. If you want a preview of the next two stories, I already posted their info on the Alternate History page. Just skip to 2017-Present.
Please enjoy. I will see you guys tomorrow with This Is Me Trying.
Your Update Link: Desperate Measures, Part 16
If you’ve visited this page after getting the email update notification, then you get to see the title, and yes, you are not wrong. You’re not hallucinating. Yesterday, I finally FINISHED the first draft of this massive insane mess, lol. After 653 pages, 235k words, and arounf 100 hours of my blood, sweat, and tears — Book 3’s first draft is done and available at Patreon for $3 and up tiers. It is, I repeat, a giant mess but it’s there if you want it.
While I take two days off from Mad World, I’m digging in more deeply to Fool Me Twice discovery and am super excited about the Jason scenes I planned yesterday. I found a REALLY great way to revisit the AJ murder mess that lets me not only revisit Jason’s early history, but Sonny and Carly’s relationship with Michal AS WELL AS Liason history with Jake and their friendship AND MONICA GETS TO SCREAM AT CARLY. LOL. I am freaking pumped to write that section of the story.
Filmed vlogs for Mad World and Fool Me Twice — Mad World will be up tomorrow, I think, and you’ll see today’s episode of FMT in about a week — there are still two more episodes from last Friday that need to be posted.
See you guys tomorrow!
Your Update Link: Darkest Before the Dawn – Part 11
Reminder: I use the little photos to indicate different topics in my update posts, so you can skip to anything you want read more easily.
Good morning! (Can I still call it morning? LOL) This update is late for…reasons. I had a great day yesterday and stayed up a bit late working on a few things — and that was a mistake. One of my favorite YouTube channels uploaded a 4hr36 minute documentary about the career and downfall of YouTube influencer Nikocado Avocado, and…I started watching it. I did not finish it — but I was up until midnight, then turned off my alarm and rolled over. I have no good defense except I have a shameful secret: I am OBSESSED with YouTube influence drama scandals. I’ve traced it back to the fact that my soap operas are boring and these people are MESSY. I’m not proud of it…but that’s why your flash fiction is late.
ANYWAY.
I had a great day writing yesterday — I wrote two chapters and today, after lunch, I’ll be starting the FINAL chapter in Book 3. That’s right, folks — I am FINALLY at the end of this beast. I have two epilogues planned but because the draft is so crazy messy, I think it might be easier for me to write effective epilogues once I’ve done the first pass at revisions. Either way, we’re finally nearing the end of the journey with this trilogy which feels suuuuper weird, I’m not gonna lie. I’ve been living with this story in one way or another since 2004, and almost full-time for the last four years so I think we’re all going to enjoy moving on to something so different like a 2017 rewrite.
Once the first draft is done, it’ll be posted at Patreon, and then I’m putting it away for two full days. On Sunday, I’ll reread it — this might take me into Monday, too, I won’t lie. I’ll start making notes about revisions. After that, I’ll start structuring the beta draft, figuring out what to edit, what to cut, what to add, etc. I hope that will take me about a week. Then — I’ll start moving through it chapter by chapter. The hope is to be done the beta draft by August 31. I lost about a week of revision time (optimally — I’d be starting that chapter by chapter work next week) so I might be a week off everywhere, We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
In my final bit of news for the day — I’m making more progress on the Alternate History temporary page. The plan for this week is just to finish writing out the new summaries and copy. I’d love if you guys took a quick look at it and let me know if you think it makes sense, if it helps you get a better sense of what you’re reading. I finished updating the copy for 2002 last night, and will finish the rest of it by Satuday, I think.
Today’s video is the next video in my FMT vlog series. I’m filming tomorrow for Mad World and Fool Me Twice, so if anyone has anything they want me to talk about, let me know.
Fool Me Twice – Video 2 – Who’s in this Story Anyway???