friday.

New icon, new post. I'm not even a particular big Chalamet fan, not gonna lie, I loved him in Call Me By Your Name, but mostly because he was the best part of that overrated movie? I thought he was really well cast as Elio, but the book is vastly superior in my opinion and to this date, I actually would rather read the sequel, Find Me, ten times over than reread CMBYN. Teenage Elio is a bit much.

Anyway, I haven't followed Chalamet's career very closely otherwise, saw him in Little Women where I thought he was very entertaining, too, but other than that? He doesn't generally star in the kind of movies I'm likely to see. Now, put him in a French Indie production? I'd be here for that.

Or, you know, the film version of Find Me. I will forever be sad I most likely won't get to see him opposite a good cast of Michel.

No, the icon is because I'm using Chalamet as PB (faceclaim or "played by") for a new character whose story I'm working on. Haven't written a male character in a while and this story... It feels so personal that I decided I needed some kind of distance to it, a greater one than I could manage if the MC was a girl. Female characters easily get self-inserty for me if the themes in a story come close to ones I know from my own life. It's an ongoing problem I face.

Anyway, I had a batch of Chalamet icons lying around from when I requested them from insomniatic in their anniversary give-away and this is one of my favourites, the cropping and the colours are really nice. My true favourite is the one with the blue ocean for background, but I still associate that so strongly with when I played Find Me!Elio that I couldn't quite make myself pick it again for this journal.

The story I got an idea for is inspired by Jardin by Pomme that I linked to yesterday. It's about a French ballet dancer whose father disappeared when he was nine and since then, he's been able to recall most events from his life in vivid detail (some kind of hyperthymesia) which is both a blessing and a curse. One day, he meets Charles at a Opéra charity gala, a tech company CEO, fifteen years older than himself, and they have an immediate connection that leads to them returning to Maxime's childhood town in Provence where he lived until the disappearance of his dad, to face his past as it looks now. The town, of course, has changed over time and the house Maxime grew up in has undergone almost unrecognisable upgrades, and living a month with Charles in this new reality, slowly realizing that maybe his childhood wasn't the picture perfect he remembers, Maxime can embark on a much needed process of starting over after his loss as a child.

That's... the short of it.

Mostly, I felt like writing something set in a modern setting again. Haven't done that in a while.

( I wrote the first couple of paragraphs... )

Right now I'm listening to the song that originally made me crazy about Pomme. It's from her first album, in style rather different from her later ones, but her voice was just as amazing back then. And it's just such a nice music video. Some beautiful French landscapes. It's like it's out of a novel from the 50's or 60's.

Watch on YouTube

The visit from my girlfriend's parents yesterday went really well. I was completely knackered afterwards and still am today, but luckily I have no plans aside from some light chores around the house. Hopefully, I can get some writing done.

friday.

I signed up for Fannish Fifty.

Enjoy my disaster theme of ballet lesbians.