tuesday.

[sunfright]

I think I might have accidentally started another Big Project, like the Humility one I did for NaNo.

I've had the idea in a couple of years, though, but never really had the courage to start it, because me and plotting and me and actually finishing things aren't friends. This time, however, I'm just gonna try regardless of the outcome, the urge is too strong.

I rewatched Datenshi no Namida a couple of days ago and besides picking up a solid Lilith muse (RP character) again, I also really wanted to work on the 24 chapter X-mas calendar that I've wanted to write for Datenshi in literal forever. Lilith is such a core character with a lot of background history, but in terms of screen time, she gets so little, so I want to write an X-mas calendar that follows her journey from before she was blinded to right before she is found in front of the church in the musical itself. Make her the actual main character of something.

If I succeed with this fic, it will be 1 out of 2 Datenshi fics on AO3 - and no, I didn't write the other.

I have made an outline for the structure of the fic, assigned prompts to each chapter (I'm using my most recent prompt table from genprompt_bingo for this) and made notes to the musical, Lilith's story and other loose thoughts. Oh, and I've written the first segment of the prologue! The frame of the story is two vignettes, the prologue and the epilogue, that are both in first person - plus an epistolary chapter somewhere in the middle, to kind of be the skeleton of the fic. The rest is in third person and more traditional storytelling.

The prologue starts this way:

Have you noticed?

It’s always the people who say, ‘no one’, when they’re asked, ‘who are you’, that end up playing the most important roles in our lives. Therefore, it is the no ones that you should never abandon, like hope.

You see -- one day, you might be the one to reply that way. And then, you will have nothing left but a stranger’s name on a piece of paper, a few lines of dialogue, stage direction and your part in the whole.

Only that… Why are our souls so unsatisfiable?

Being no one should surely be enough.

There will be a shift between chapters that are focused on the past (her time as a ballerina and her flight from Paris after losing her sight) and chapters that are focused on the present (where she has returned to Paris and is living with another sex worker, my OC, Clémence while contemplating finding Jean-Paul, her brother, again). I'm hoping to kind of cover her whole life this way and thematically approach the notion of before/after...

I was going to write this in December last year, but X-mas was hard, so I gave it up. Writing an X-mas calendar in February seems so out of season, but I realized that if I start this project now, I might actually finish in time to post it in December, later this year. How nice wouldn't that be?

And not writing it as a NaNo project means less stress and pressure, which is always a good thing.

I guess we'll see how this works out.

Today's musical input is, in honour of Datenshi, where this piece features in one of the key scenes, Arvo Pärt's Spiegel Im Spiegel:

Watch on YouTube

And his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, two of my favourite Pärt pieces.

Watch on YouTube

Good "timeofday" do all of you!

Comments

[sunfright]

Thank you so much!! I'm really glad you like it. I managed to get started on the first scene yesterday. It's just a couple of paragraphs, but... Well, I am the kind of writer, I get things out three or four sentences at a time with big breaks in between. Haha.

You can have what I've written so far here, since I know you loved the musical!

We grew up at the Palais Garnier, as if it were a home, not an opera house. Along with the other ‘little rats’, we would scale the large staircases in minutes, ignoring the cramp in our legs with the ease of practice. Unlike many of the other children, we didn’t live in the dormitories that lay in extension of the school, but instead at the Duke’s mansion. With Mother. Jean-Paul, my twin brother, always said that she would’ve kicked us out of that house, have us live at the theatre, if her reputation could bear it; it just couldn’t. I -- wanted to believe that a small part of her preferred that we stayed at home, for her sake. And for ours.

Fool, Jean-Paul would call me, affectionately. Believe what you want.

So, I did.

[sonofgodzilla]

AHHHH! THIS IS PERFECTION ALREADY! You have such a beautiful talent with words, and this is the most immaculately crafted opening I have read in a long time. It's beautiful! I legit cannot wait to see how you go forward with this, you definitely have my attention!

[sunfright]

Thank you so much!! I really look forward to working more on this piece once I'm done with the challenge I'm currently working on. It's very vivid in my mind, so I'm sure I'll get it done eventually! Thank you so much for your support!