Thanks to everyone who submitted their reviews and questions. They were really fun to think about, so without further ado, here are my responses!

AtomicKitty301

Question 1: Is Stephanie Frangipane based off of Gwen Stefani?

Stephanie is not based on any specific real-life person. While I did want her to be a complex and fleshed out character in her own right, she's meant to be a general representation of countless abuse victims in the entertainment industry - particularly (but not only) young women - who have spent decades being unjustly silenced and vilified for trying to stand up to their abusers.

The name Stephanie actually came from Stephanie Beatriz - best known for playing Rosa in Brooklyn Nine-Nine (where she also co-starred with Suki's actress, Chelsea Peretti) and more recently voicing Mirabel in Encanto - since she was one of the actresses I initially thought of when writing the character. Compared to most of my OCs (and not just in my Sing-related fics) Stephanie was actually a pretty difficult character to fancast, and I wrote her with quite a few different actresses in mind - Kaley Cuoco, Natalie Portman, Melissa Fumero, etc - before I eventually settled on Sarah Paulson.

I actually found out recently that, by complete coincidence, another FanFiction writer called TheDragonSaver named Porsha's mother Stephani (though they named her after Stefani Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga) in their stories months before I even started writing this one. If you haven't read their work, I highly recommend it!

Question 2: I know that you said that Clay is Bono's direct counterpart, but who do you think is Mr. Crystal's direct counterpart? I personally think he is the Sing universe's direct counterpart to Simon Cowell of our world.

I certainly see some Simon Cowell parallels in how he presents himself, but I don't really think Crystal has a direct counterpart in the real world, at least not to the same extent that Clay Calloway does.

Much like Stephanie is for the victims, I'm inclined to think that Crystal himself is meant to be a general allegory for a lot of infamous producers and moguls in the entertainment industry. These people have spent decades abusing their money and influence to get what they want (especially when it comes to taking advantage of vulnerable young newcomers) but in today's world they're finally starting to be held accountable for their actions, and hopefully some good long-term changes will come from this.

If I could suggest any specific mogul to be Jimmy Crystal's real-life counterpart, it would probably be Donald Trump. But for the sake of not starting an argument, that's all I'll say on the matter.

Designation M (sent over PM)

Question: How would you rationalize the world of Sing? Alien planet? Alternate dimension?

The simplest explanation would be that it's an alternate universe. Like in Zootopia, humans don't nor did they ever exist, and without them the other animals evolved and became anthropomorphic instead (so it's not a scary, Planet Of The Apes situation where animals usurped humanity or anything like that).

I think it's just a modern world that's pretty much identical to ours, and most major events and people that exist or existed in our real history have direct counterparts (or at least equivalents) in Sing's universe. E.g. in my continuity, Cute But Very Clingy confirms that William Shakespeare existed (though his species is left to the reader's imagination), and still wrote all the plays and stories that he did in real life.

To be honest, the Sing movies have the same pitfall that a lot of talking animal movies have (Zootopia being the rare exception) where there's no real reason for the characters to be talking animals, other than the fact that they're simply more fun to draw and animate than human characters are. It's clear the movie itself doesn't even really want you to think about the logic since it has nothing to do with the actual story or themes, so it's better to suspend disbelief and just roll with it.

Guest

Question: What is Florence Fletcher's biography and does she have a family?

Florence Fletcher is a gorilla who used to perform at the Prairie (now New Moon) Theatre, and was personally mentored by Nana Noodleman herself.

My headcanon is that gorillas in the Sing universe were (and to a certain extent, still are) generally stereotyped to be clumsy brutes who are only good for heavy lifting, and at worst dangerous thugs and thieves. Florence is regarded as something of a trailblazer for defying this preconception, and proving her talent and potential was not limited by her species.

Florence went to Redshore City a few years after Stephanie - whom she knew from Nana's troupe - but it didn't take her long to return home since she didn't get along with Jimmy. Back in Calatonia, Florence suffered a sudden injury onstage and has never performed again, but she still remained in the public eye and - through various works with charity and running the city's annual Autumn Festival - she's now a beloved and highly respected member of the community.

As Buster mentions to Porsha in Chapter 12, he was really hoping to work with Florence at some point, but she retired before he bought the Theatre, so it sadly wasn't meant to be. Johnny also has a lot of respect for her, partially since his mother was a big fan of her work, and while he did pass his audition in the first film on his own merit (and the fact that Daniel's height was inconvenient), Buster also wanted to replicate Fletcher's success story by giving another talented young gorilla the chance to become a star.

However, that's all I can say for now, but more will be revealed when Florence Fletcher officially debuts in One Way Left To Go.

RandomReader (known on Wattpad as TheWriter1322)

Question 1: Have you thought about doing a little animated version or an audio drama of your story?

I do have a bit of experience with animatics and storyboarding (amateur experience - I haven't worked on any real movies) but I actually hadn't thought of doing that for my Sing stories. I probably wouldn't do the voices myself (mainly because I'm quite self-conscious about my voice) and I'm not sure how I'd be able to recruit or pay voice actors to do it instead, but I could definitely could the artwork.

Question 2: How do you get through writers block? How do you move past a block in your creative mojo and find the strength to keep on writing? I hope you can help me out. You one of the main reasons why I want write FanFiction. I hope you can help me out.

Prior to my COVID hiatus, there were a lot of times when I'd write a well-received fic (though none to the same extent as Love And Pain, Pride And Shame) and I'd try to "cash in" on the popularity by making a sequel, but I wouldn't have the ending planned (or the story in general) and it'd end up dead in the water to the point where I'd just give up completely and delete both it and it's predecessor.

With one-shots I just take the same approach that I did before, but with multi-chapter stories I now use what I like to call a "map" approach, where I plan out the general story and its ending before I've even started writing it. I decide how many chapters I want the story to be and I list them in a single document, then note all the important events and even smaller details that I want to put in each one. The best way to do this is to make the notes for the later chapters first, then make sure your earlier chapters will properly build up to them.

These are some samples from the "map" I used when developing Love And Pain, Pride And Shame:

* Porsha stars opposite Johnny in the troupe's Romeo And Juliet show. After the opening number, Porsha learns from Moon that Rosita is filling in for Meena as Juliet's nurse. Porsha and Rosita have a scene together where the nurse comforts Juliet, and Porsha nearly breaks down crying onstage when Rosita hugs her. The rest of the show goes well, but Porsha doesn't attend the afterparty and instead goes home to write in her diary.

* Rosita finds Porsha on the stage and comforts her, directly mirroring their scene in the Romeo And Juliet show. Porsha reveals that she overheard her mother the night she left, apparently saying that she didn't want her ("there's nothing I'll ever regret more than having her...") but Suki later reveals to Buster that this wasn't the full story.

* In the autumn, Porsha revisits Stephanie's grave. For her final diary entry, Porsha claims that she doesn't need to write as much here anymore, since she now has new friends and loved ones to lean on if she needs them. After her first show using her mother's maiden name - Frangipane - Porsha once again performs Stephanie's favourite song to honour her mother's memory: Could Have Been Me.

These were actually the first three points that I noted when I was drafting the story, and Porsha and Rosita's moment on the bench (Chapter 22) was the very first scene that I wrote in full. As the story developed further I added other points in between these so all the events were listed in chronological order, and as you can tell, certain details were still changed, added or omitted in the finished story, but the map still served as an incredibly useful template.

This approach was not only helpful for figuring out the end of the story, but it also allowed me to implement foreshadowing and Chekhov's Guns in earlier chapters, so the rest of the story was naturally building up to the ending. If I'd written this story pre-hiatus, I probably wouldn't have included any of the hints or puzzle pieces that built towards Stephanie's resting place prior to the reveal, and it would have just completely come out of nowhere and been a lot less satisfying for both the readers and myself.

So I highly recommend you use a similar map to motivate and pace yourself when writing the rest of your story. You may need to announce a temporary hiatus on your updates while you do the plan - just for the sake of not keeping your readers impatiently waiting - but the road is a lot easier to travel on when you yourself know where it's going.

Sandman16

Question: I wanna review this on YouTube - with your permission of course - but would love to show how amazing your book really is.

Admittedly this seems to be more of a request rather than a question, but yeah. If you do decide to review Love And Pain, Pride And Shame on YouTube, you have my full permission, and I'd be really interested in seeing that video and hearing your full thoughts.

Tangled4Ever

Question: When you're writing characters with strong accents - such as Johnny and his dad - how do you go about showing their dialogue authentically? I really struggle to find the right blend of having characters talk "normally" (that is, in a style that is very universal and clearly understood by all) and allowing their personal background and tone to shine through without it sounding to heavy-handed. Big Daddy especially is tough for me as I left England nearly 20 years ago and haven't spoken to anyone with his dialect in even longer. Since Johnny and his dad are crucial to my own WIP, I would really love some advice in this area.

At least in terms of writing characters from Sing, I mainly get a sense of their distinct accents and dialects from observing clips. Not only from the films themselves, but also from interviews and even other movies that the actors have appeared in, so I can get a sense of how they would say certain lines and words that they wouldn't say in the actual Sing films. It might not be a flawless process, but it is the one I've found the most success in.

As someone who does still live in the UK, Johnny and his father are actually quite easy for me to write. When writing British characters from lower-class backgrounds, the main aspect of their dialect is simplification, using terms that have the correct meaning but not the correct grammar (e.g. using "was" instead of "were" or "what" instead of "that"). Coincidentally, Marcus/Big Daddy actually does have a major role in my one-shot Still Standing, so you're more than welcome to look at that for reference on how I write his dialogue.

To be honest, the characters I actually struggled the most with were Porsha and Jimmy. Halsey and Bobby Cannavale (their actors) are both Italian-American and it's all but stated that the characters are in-universe too, and there were quite a few lines I ended up rewriting and removing because it made them sound like caricatures from a mobster parody. Porsha's accent in particular is somewhat inconsistent (as good as Halsey is in the part, this is only her second voice acting role, and her first major one at that) and she actually switches between using certain terms (e.g. "you" and "ya") almost at random, so that was a somewhat difficult balance to pull off. But again, re-watching their scenes from the movie and other footage of both Halsey and Cannavale were quite useful for reference.

Well anyway, I guess that's about it. It's been really fun and almost kind of cathartic being able to share some of my early ideas, and I hope it's given my regular readers a worthwhile insight into this story and series.

I have another one-shot coming up on Thursday, 29th September, but my true main event of this year is of course my next full-length story, One Way Left To Go, which I'll be releasing starting from Tuesday, October 4th.

Everything since Roomies! has been building to this and, while it won't be my very last Sing-related fic (I have an AU story in early development for 2023), One Way Left To Go will be the conclusion of this overarching saga, so I really hope that it sends my series off on a high note.

I guess I'll see you all very soon...
MysteryWriter2187