Terry and Chelsea

What do we see predominately on fanfic.net? Terry/Dana, Terry/Max, Terry/Melanie and Terry/Original Character or other Batman franchise villain (Catwoman, descendants of Catwoman, etc.). While those are all well and good, and I believe that anything written well and with passion can involve predictable Terry pairings and pull it off, I think one main character in particular from the show has been overlooked. I've been following BB fanfiction since the show was still on the air with new episodes. The trend seemed to be Terry/Dana making up a good amount of the original romance fanfics, and then along came some Terry/Max and Terry/"Ten" (Melanie). And this was before the site added search by characters feature, too. But that was pretty much all you got on fanfic, and it still is. I like that there are more Terry/Dana stories up now, as the Terry/Max ones were getting pretty numerous (and this is coming from a mainly Terry/Max writer lol). But my point is, I recall only a couple of Terry/Chelsea stories. And they were usually one-shots, I think.

So my best friend and I were noticing this a few months ago while discussing BB fanfiction, and she decided to write a Terry/Chelsea pairing. GA involves Chelsea pretty heavily, and she plays a bigger role than Dana, even. Why? Well, I just think Chelsea's shway. But as I was writing scenes with Terry and Chelsea in them, I was also realizing how amazingly awesome they would be together. The chemistry was undeniable, and all the two needed was a good plot to make it happen.

Enter Butterfly Wings...

So my friend (co-author to this blog) has been writing a fanfiction called Butterfly Wings: A Chelsea Story. What I love about it is the depth she's added to Chelsea's character. She also wrote a deeper and even darker Max in She Only Steals Diamonds, which involved a new Catwoman. In Butterfly Wings, she took the original storyline of Terry/Dana relationship drama and made the switch with Chelsea. Instead of it focusing as usual on Terry or Dana's take of their relationship falling apart, it focuses on Chelsea at first just trying to help her friend Dana and ending up further befriending Terry and falling for him.

Also, she gave Chelsea's character more personality than the show wrote for her, which is something I also tried to do with GA. I didn't want to leave Max as ONLY a brainy person who was actually pretty annoying in her quest to become Batman's assistant. I took what I was given and added some other personality sparks and investigated her past. In Butterfly Wings, Chelsea's not just a popular girl at school with a rich, distant father - and Dana's best friend. She's creative, a closet fashion designer, and she has her own world in her passion of which no one knows (from the beginning, at least). And I think that Butterfly Wings takes the beautiful process of blossoming and captures each stage in snapshots. Not just the blossoming of a friendship and romance, but a blossoming of the individual heart and opening of oneself - like a flower, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.

And then, of course, there's that undeniable chemistry between Terry and Chelsea... ;)

We need more of Chelsea and Terry together. We need more of this digging deeper into the characters. When you google "Terry McGinnis Chelsea Cunningham," Butterfly Wings is the 9th result - the 3rd result when you google "Terry McGinnis Chelsea." Speaks volumes, doesn't it?

You can read Butterfly Wings: A Chelsea Story here at FanFiction.net.

~ Deserted Mirage