Conflict of Interest - Commentary - Ch. 9-10 (Patreon)

Alrighty, another two weeks gone, and I’m right back where I started - writing another commentary!  It’s been a moderately eventful two weeks in Writingland...actually, I should come up with a legitimate name for the place where my mind goes when it wants to write.  Writingland will work for now, but I’ll try to think of something better.  Roseville?  Beetown?

Anyway, in between the previous commentary and now, I decided to start a new story!  That’s right, apparently the stories I’m currently working on aren’t enough.  But I had this idea and got really excited about it, so I couldn’t not write it, right?

Technically, yes.  I could just forget about it (or try to).  But...it’s so good!

I refuse to give up on Queens of Remnant yet though.  Mostly because it took me an entire week to get back into the story - I’m not fully starting a new project until I finish the damn thing this time.  The good news (ish) is that I only have like 18 chapters left to finish.  That might seem like a lot but...well, unfortunately, it is.

But I can do it!  I know I can.  (Psyching myself up here.)  I’ve nearly completed the White Rose side of the story, then I’ll go back and wrap up the Bumbleby side last.  Then I’ll close the Google Doc and dropkick it into the ocean.

Kidding, kidding.  Sorry, I’ve been ultra dramatic recently.  There must be something in the air…

One notable event that happened in the past two weeks was that Queens of Remnant reached the point where Google told me “You cannot type another word.”  Well, they didn’t say that exactly.  It would’ve been nice if they had because then I wouldn’t have had a mini heart attack then spent five minutes trying to figure out why the story was suddenly broken.

I was in the middle of writing a kissing scene too.  I was gleefully typing away when a red banner popped up at the top of the page saying that the document couldn’t be saved and that I should try reloading.  Considering I’d been writing for about an hour at that point, my first reaction was somewhere between a gasp and fainting.

Fortunately, it had saved everything except the last two words.  But when I retyped those words, the same error popped up.  Rinse and repeat.  My other story docs were working though, so I had an “ah...I’ve been here before” moment.

The same thing happened while writing WDU.  Google doesn’t like when stories get too long, so I end up having to split them across multiple Google docs.  Queens of Remnant has reached that point!  So I yoinked the first 8 chapters out of the main doc and made a second one for them.  I prefer being able to see as much of the story as possible, so this isn’t exactly ideal...but I’ll consider it a pseudo-badge of honor.

Tl;dr - Queens of Remnant is growing up!

Ok, but that new story though…

Usually when I start a new story, I dump a ton of time and words into it in the first couple of weeks.  Because I refuse to give up on Queens of Remnant though, I limited myself to only coming up with a vague outline and some of the highlights.  Once QoR is wrapped up, I’ll dive into it with gusto.

It’s going to be a short story.  My initial estimate is 70k words (I know, I know, short for me!).  I told myself that I can only write 14 chapters, and I’ve done a good job of keeping my outline within that range!  So...I’m encouraged that it won’t balloon into something crazy.

The idea though!  I know, you just want to know the idea!  In a nutshell, it’s White Rose friends-to-lovers.  I don’t want to say too much and spoil it, but it’s going to be super sweet/cute/adorable/all of the above.  Nothing super angsty.  Just a nice, sweet little morsel of gay.  It feels a little bit like a Red Carpet Romance and Oh God...She’s Hot mash-up, actually.

We’ll see how it ends up, but I’m loving it so far.  I want to finish QoR even more so that I can start working on it for real…

Ok wow, enough of me rambling.  Let’s discuss some chapters!

I’m sure everyone’s happy now that we’re getting to the good stuff - i.e. Weiss and Ruby interacting for more than a few seconds at a time.  I’m happy about it too, mostly because I love their banter so much.  They fit together so well, and their easy conversation shows that.

I think that’s one of the reasons I really like this story - as soon as they start talking to each other, they have this incredible cadence right off the bat.  Like...chemistry, I guess.  Their minds operate on the same wavelength even though they’re still vastly different people.  They’re strangers, yet they just...click.  They both feel it, now it’s just a matter of them doing something about it.

I loved the idea of them going for a walk together for two reasons.  One - so that I didn’t have to write another restaurant/dinner scene.

I’m positive I’ve mentioned before how tedious dinner scenes are.  There’s never enough conversation to realistically pass all of the time it takes for you to order, wait for your food to arrive, eat, wait for the check, etc.  If you translated written dinner scenes into real life, they’re probably eating in a matter of minutes or something like that.

Those little things bother me...so I avoid them when possible.  Unfortunately, real-world AUs involve a lot of going out to dinner with friends.  That’s just what we do!

The second reason I had Ruby and Weiss go for a walk is that it seemed very...domestic and out of character.  They both work so much, when do you think they last went for a walk through the park?  Unless walking through the park was getting them from one work thing to the other, of course.

Yet here they are, taking the opportunity to walk together.  No electronics involved!  (Which is something of a miracle considering Ruby’s there.)

Also, I don’t know if you noticed, but Ruby mentioned there were real and robo dog walkers there.  So...robot dogs are a thing of the future!  I think that’d be cool, don’t you?  If you’re allergic, or don’t have the time/money/energy to have a real pet, just get a robot version!  Although if you’re willing to take them out for a walk...maybe you should just get a real one anyway.

(Would I get a robot pet?  I think I would.  Maybe a robot cat, since I’m allergic to cats?  They’re cute though.  What about robot fish?  Those would also be interesting.  I think I love dogs too much to not have a fluffy, real version though.)

If you’ve read Dream Theory, you probably remember the park near Ruby’s apartment building.  I was so happy that I decided to put a park there.  Past Me definitely made it easier for Present Me for once!  Now Ruby and Weiss have a nice, tranquil location to enjoy their second official meeting.

Ruby pointed out something that I hardly thought about until re-reading - why did Weiss pick a park in the middle of the tech district?  Was it an coincidental decision or did she know/assume Ruby would already be familiar with it?

The answer is...she assumed Ruby would already know where it is.  For as considerate as Ruby has been to Weiss thus far, Weiss has been almost equally considerate in return.  It just goes to show you what she can accomplish when she really sets her mind to something.  She wants to learn what Ruby wants in life/from work so that she can recruit her.

So Weiss thinks to herself...what’s an activity where we can talk with few distractions, but also less risk of being caught by someone they know?  A walk fits that perfectly!  Now, where should they walk?  I’m sure there’s plenty of malls around, but those would be distracting plus be crowded.  So...a park.  Tranquil and quiet.  Which park though?  Well, as fortune has it, there’s one in the tech district.  And what are the chances that Ruby, tech wizard extraordinaire, is already familiar with that area?

Ruby’s thinking to herself, “How did Weiss know?”  Well, Weiss knew because she took the time to come up with the perfect plan and match it to what she knows about Ruby so far!

Something that Weiss doesn’t know yet, but is quickly learning, is that Ruby’s actually quite the hot commodity.  We have Jez putting some moves on her already, now some random girl sitting near the park has entered the competition.  Then, in chapter 10, we watch all the techy people in existence fawn all over her.

At this point, Weiss is probably thinking to herself, “Wow, there are a lot of people after her.”  (Including yourself, Weiss.  You just don’t realize it yet.)

You probably noticed Ruby and Weiss’ recurring “argument” in Chapter 9 and 10 - Ruby saying that being attorney doesn’t mean Weiss is a serious person, while Weiss is arguing otherwise.  I got such a kick out of bringing this up time and time again.  I think it’s a great way to show how much they’re thinking about each other, how both of them refuse to lose, and how they can handle an argument without resorting to frustration or anger.

Ruby doesn’t care about winning or losing, as she tells us.  Weiss, on the other hand...something tells me she’d be a sore loser.  But she’s willing to playfully argue with Ruby, which I think is a good thing.  She doesn’t immediately resort to a “You’re wrong and I’m going to prove why” type of mindset.  She’s a very strategic arguer though.  She understands when it’s best to retreat and regroup before swooping in for the victory.  Will she win this particular argument though?  Time will tell…(or maybe it ultimately doesn’t matter in the end).

What I love just as much as their banter is when they commiserate over shared annoyances.  Even though they’re on opposing sides of the law, they do work in a very similar field with the same people.  There’s a lot they can gripe about that the other will understand better than the average person.

When Weiss is talking about Jared and his massive list of names, Ruby’s response harkens back to an issue I kept running into while writing Dream Theory - how did Ruby not find Blake while Blake was missing?

I had to toe the line with that question over and over again.  Obviously, Ruby’s a genius.  Obviously, she can do basically everything she sets her mind to.  If that’s true, how did Blake elude her for so long?

Well, there are a few parts to that explanation.  The first is that even though Blake was gone for about a year, no one knew she was alive for a good portion of that.  She let everyone believe she was dead so that no one would look for her.  Then she found Yang in the Dreamscape, but she asked Yang not to tell anyone either.  So we can assume Yang didn’t tell Ruby for a period of time before ultimately cracking and spilling the beans.

So Ruby didn’t have a full year of searching.  And she had no reason to search prior to learning Blake was still alive because she would assume that if Blake was alive, she would come back to Yang.  Ruby knows how much Blake and Yang are in love, so there’s no reason to think otherwise.

Once Blake returns to the picture, Ruby can start searching in earnest.  Well, she tells us how difficult the beginning of that search would be in this chapter:

Considering the sheer volume of traffic the transit center saw on any given day at any given time, that list must have been massive.  Not to mention incomplete, since it was next to impossible to track all of those identities when factoring in holomasks and the infamous dead zones.

So tracking Blake through the transit center would be very difficult.  I would still think that Ruby could do it though, given enough time and motivation.  She definitely has the motivation, and maybe enough time, but there’s another factor working against her - she was too helpful.  i.e. she taught Blake enough to make it harder to track her.

Blake is also exceptionally smart, right?  While dating Yang, she would have spent a lot of time with Ruby, and Ruby just loves telling people how to safeguard their identity...or how to stay off people’s radar.

Basically, Blake learned enough to make it super hard for Ruby to track her (something I’m sure Ruby lamented many times during her search).  And that’s my explanation for how Blake was able to stay away for so long without Ruby finding out where she was.  Ruby would have found her eventually though, I’m sure of it.

Ruby also would have found out about Weiss’ estrangement from her family, but she stopped searching before diving too deeply into that mess.  I didn’t really consider what Winter or Whitley are up to now (or even if they exist in this universe) because they weren’t relevant to the story.  Weiss’ father is very relevant though, as he’s the driving force behind Weiss’ determination to become the best attorney in the city.  Or the world, possibly.

She lets us know that he issued an ultimatum and she told him right where he could stick it.  That pretty much sums up her character in this universe.

Weiss mentions ‘tech gods’ in this chapter, which I imagine to be like...Twitch streamers hopped up on the latest, greatest technology.  They’re the first ones in line getting neural implants or whatever other crazy stuff comes out, then put up videos for the masses.

You might have noticed an important trait that Ruby and Weiss share when they’re talking about money buying happiness.  When Ruby asks Weiss if she’s happy, Weiss says:

“I prefer to think of myself as content.”

Now, if you remember from way back in Chapter 3, this is what Ruby had to say about her own mental state:

She was happy most of the time, but she would describe herself as primarily content right now.

These are two incredibly talented, incredibly successful people, yet they’re just...content?  It’s almost as if they’re missing something in their lives.  (I’m sure that was obvious, but I wanted to point it out regardless!)

There’s another Dream Theory reference while they’re going to Ruby’s apartment - the electric deathboxes!  i.e. elevators.  Ruby mentions how she’s hacked into the elevators so she can start and stop them at will, which we saw in Dream Theory when she trapped the bad guys inside.

Weiss gets to see Ruby’s apartment so I could set up the next chapter (and also for another reason that might become obvious later).  I couldn’t think of another way to bring up Tech Masters in an organic way with Weiss prompting the conversation.  Ruby could have brought it up on her own in conversation, but I thought that would feel a little more contrived.

Also, if Ruby brought it up on her own, I don’t think Weiss would have shown the same curiosity towards it.  Weiss could have been like “Oh, a big tech event, nice.”  But by showing her that pile of phones, we got her mind turning.  Now she’s thinking, “That’s so many phones.  What could Ruby possibly be doing with that many?”  It was the perfect bait to catch ourselves a Weiss.

Remember how I said this story was originally going to focus on one big case?  But that didn’t happen because I wanted to focus on their relationship instead?  Well, even though we didn’t get that big murder case, we do get glimpses of one of Weiss’ smaller cases.

This one is the restaurateur she met with earlier in the story, who she coolly walked out on after telling him that she’d only work with him if he gave her all the details.  In Chapter 10, we check back in on this case and learn that he’s innocent (thankfully), but was kind of, sort of hooking up with one of the busboys.

I love that Weiss’ is basically “Ugh, why are people so dumb.”  She thinks that about all of her clients though, so it’s not really a surprise she thinks that again here.

Who isn’t dumb though?  Ruby!

In another example of the two of them being so considerate of one another, Ruby sent Weiss a holomask to wear to the party.  Isn’t that so cute?  But Ruby didn’t just send a regular ol' holomask - she splurged and bought one of the ‘designer’ versions.

It’s so cute to think about Ruby making that decision.  For herself, she buys the no-frills version as long as it’s capable of doing what she needs it to do.  For Weiss...well, Weiss gets the pretty version.  Ruby probably thinks to herself that Weiss always looks so put together, of course she would want the fancy model.  Weiss is a little more practical than that (thankfully), but she still appreciates Ruby’s thoughtfulness.

At this point in the story, it feels like they’re both circling the same drain.  “I want to know how her mind works” seems to be a common theme, which is apparently smart-people speak for “I’m romantically interested in this person.”

(Side note, but I watched this show last night and the couple described how they started dating.  The husband apparently walked up to his future-wife and asked, “Are you courting anyone at the moment?”  I could totally see Weiss doing that.  Maybe not in this story, but in a similar one!  Ruby’s response would probably be somewhere along the lines of, “What...do you mean…?”)

So I imagined Tech Masters to be a super futuristic version of like CES/E3/PAX (back when we could have those big conventions!)  Instead of cosplayers though, you have tech-heads wearing as many fancy technology things as they can afford.

Can you imagine straight-laced, super serious attorney Weiss at an event like PAX?  Talk about a fish out of water.  She doesn’t seem to mind much once Ruby’s around!  That seems to be the case with a lot of things though.

I just realized...how does Weiss know Ruby’s single?  They haven’t brought up romance yet, so Weiss is making that assumption based on...conjecture?  She’s pretty confident about it though…

Oh!  It’s probably a guess, but an educated one.  Even if Ruby didn’t have time to bring it up in conversation yet, Weiss went over to Ruby’s apartment and found no signs of another person living there (or another person’s stuff lingering around).  She also figures that if Ruby was dating someone, that special someone should have been invited to Tech Masters instead of her.

And, if that wasn’t enough to convince her, maybe she participated in a little bit of office gossip?  Maybe she asked one of her coworkers, or one of the paralegals, if they knew whether or not Ruby was dating anyone.  Either way, it’s reasonable for her to make that assumption!

As you can tell, I like puzzling through these little issues.  This is part of the reason I love writing so much - problem solving!  That being said, it bothers me when things aren’t at least vaguely realistic/plausible, which is why I have to problem solve to begin with.

Speaking of realistic...how’d you like that whale hologram thing Ruby created??

When I created Tech Masters and gave Ruby the opening speech, I realized I also had to come up with something cool for her to show off.  So...I kind of had to invent something that she could invent.  That sort of thing is always difficult for me; I just don’t think I’m very creative in that way.  What I usually end up doing is coming up with something I want/would wish for, then pretend it exists.

In this case, wouldn’t it be cool if we could link our phones together to project a movie (basically)?  Kind of like VR, only without the headset (if Ruby’s video reminded you of The Blu, I wouldn’t be surprised!)  I think that’d be pretty cool.  Imagine hanging out with a group of friends and doing this.  Assuming you could pry their phones from their hands, of course.

At the end of Chapter 10 though, I did remind everyone that for as similar as Ruby and Weiss are, they’re still very different.  Ruby essentially just invented a new technology she could have sold for millions of dollars but goes and shares the code with everyone for free.  Weiss, meanwhile, can hardly get her head wrapped around that.

Weiss would have sold it.  Not because she needs the money, but because it was worth something.  Why would she ever give away something with value?

Ruby’s charitable side is probably the biggest difference between them.  We’ve already seen multiple instances where Ruby’s going out of her way/spending her free time helping others.  She really is Batman…

Maybe some of her altruism will rub off on Weiss?  Time will tell...

In the meantime, I hope you’re enjoying this story as much as I am!  And thank you, again, for all of your support.  You definitely keep me motivated to keep writing day-in and day-out!

Until next time,

Miko