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saturday.
This is going to be a warm-up for my Manon/Marguerite story which will either go up before I go to bed tonight, depending on how late I can hold out, or first thing in the morning.
Because this is going to be yet another post about The Lady of the Camellias. Are you sick of this canon at this point? I wouldn't be able to sympathise, but I could probably understand why, lol.
I've roleplayed Marguerite for years and she remains my favourite character, but for some reason I can't write fanfiction from her PoV. Manon's story is told from Manon's PoV, I've written fanfiction about Prudence Duvernoy's thoughts and views of Marguerite, I've written Olympia/Marguerite fanfiction - from Olympia's PoV. Until now, I for some reason haven't dared touch the lady herself.
I hope, one day it'll come.
Until then, I have a lot of fun exploring the ladies around her. I think I've exhausted my thoughts on Manon, those 50 pages did something about the itch... that one fic I wrote about Prudence years and years ago, ditto. That leaves us with Olympia. I've already written and posted two fics about Olympia that I'm pretty satisfied with, but she keeps intriguing me as a character.
I think it's two very separate things. In both novel and ballet, she's Marguerite's contrast. Probably a girl from the same kind of background, but she is everything Marguerite is not. She is not noble or "good", she is greedy, shallow and every other thing you might imagine a courtesan to be, if she has no heart. I really want to work with that perception. Because I don't think it makes a person less "good" to think of their own needs, requirements and wants. It makes them wise. It makes them strong. But of course, both then and now, we don't like strong, wise, self-reliant women, do we?
She is described as such in the novel: The girl was beautiful - and in terms of her figure, more beautiful than Marguerite. This became even clearer to me as I saw the former looked at Olympia while I was talking to her. The man who would be the lover of that woman could be as proud as M. de N..., and she was beautiful enough to inspire a passion equal to that which Marguerite had inspired in me. If you just threw up a little in your mouth, I fully understand. Really.
The second reason I think Olympia intrigues me is due to her solo in the ballet which is set to the prettiest Chopin music in existence.
I love everything about this scene, from Olympia's pink costume, so bright and spritely in comparison to Marguerite's dreary brown, her playfulness, youth and liveliness. And the way she owns wanting Armand, it has nothing to do with him and everything to do with
My favourite Olympia to this day must be Stephanie who was just promoted to principal at the RDB. She danced Olympia in 2014 when I saw three separate performances of the ballet in a week. She was the highlight of that evening and that cast. I might have a picture...
So if I'm going to work more with this canon right now, I think Olympia is my best bet. She's a fittingly minor character that I have a lot of wriggle room, but also established enough that there's personality and plot to stay true to.
A new round of
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genprompt_bingo is coming up, so maybe I'll have a prompt table made just for Olympia fic, or to afford myself more freedom - more broadly for The Lady of the Camellias fic. There are truly so many female characters in that canon that are never given voice that it could be my mission to grant every single one of them a time to speak.I mean, don't get me started on Astrid Elbo's Nanina...
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Exactly this! There's a framework, but it's up to you to fill in the many blanks and that's such a wonderful process. I love it.
I've already done two cards for