and now I want to write Utena crossovers again
I was looking through some old 750 Words entries, and I came across quite a lot of stuff that was going to be history of the rose until that turned into an entirely different fic. But the quality of writing in them is probably better than the actual fic turned out to be (not that I don't love it as it is) and it seems a bit of a shame for them to be lost to the depths of the internets.
Basically none of these are directly connected to each other, but I guess they could be?
Their lives are made of ink and paper, words and concepts stacked on each other in towering piles to the ceiling and back again. Flesh and physicality are not important; it is ideas that matter here.
--
Autor manages to dig up some of Drosselmeyer's old drafts in some attic or other, stacks and stacks of yellowing notebooks and paper that he dumps on Fakir's desk.
"Here. Some inspiration for you," he says crisply, and leaves. Fakir can hear what lies unsaid in the air: the story of the prince and the raven and Princess Tutu was hardly Drosselmeyer's only work. It just happened to be his last.
Fakir shores up the towers of paper, caps his inkwell, and begins to read.
Princes, princesses, knights, men-at-arms, ladies-in-waiting, clever orphans, talking animals, wise wizards and mischievous spirits. Drosselmeyer had a talent for picking up the themes of folktales and expanding them, layering dark and subtle words over a scaffold of plot. Fakir recognizes stories from his childhood here, given depth and dimension far beyond his memories of them. The words are simple and short, but the concepts are not.
He races through them, characters and scenes jumbling in his head. Some are Drosselmeyer's, but some are not. Reading has always been a good way to make himself write, and now it seems to be working more than ever. He dreams up princesses who become knights and knights who become woodcarvers and orphan girls who act like princes, pinning them down by the barest edges to paper with a few sparse words.
And then he is down to the last story, a title he does not recognize. It seems to be one of the oldest of the lot, by its deeply yellow pages and faded ink. Like a lot of these stories Autor has given him, it's unbound, merely a few sheets of paper clipped together.
The Witch, it says, in slightly wavering handwriting.
--
The Witch, though without conclusive date, is generally presumed to be one of Drosselmeyer's earlier works. It is absent of his usual heavily tragic structure, tending instead towards a lighter air of general unease. Due to this, it is (sadly) one of his lesser-known works.
However, it has its staunch defenders; one of Drosselmeyer's own descendents among them. The popular author Fakir lists it as his favorite, citing it as a critique of the whole prince-princess-witch(magician, wizard, evil talking animal, etc) system. Unlike many of Drosselmeyer's other variations on that theme, our main character here is not content to remain a despairing princess. Here is the first time in works of this period that we see a heroine become a villain, a device explored by Drosselmeyer in great detail during the latter part of his career.
*The story of Princess Tutu is unjustly famed for this, despite Kraehe being on the Raven's side from the start, and a secondary lead at best. The New Legend of Snow White is a rather better example, with the main villain as a former heroine and many hints that the current lead could fall into this role as well.
--
The world's shell is broken, shattered into bright sharp pieces, and something amazing has been born.
Outside the gates, it is summer.
Anthy has forgotten the weight of it, sticky humidity and bright hot sunlight wrapping their arms around you like an old friend. Insects buzz quietly in the plants, flies and cicadas and other things she can't remember.
So many things she has forgotten.
The road stretches out before her, wide and welcome. Her shoes tap softly on it, and she is reminded for just a moment of a the roar of a car's engine and the crash of breaking glass.
--
Prince, princess, knight, witch. These are all real enough, and they themselves are proof of that, but on some level they're just a way of thinking about things. Heroism, helplessness, selfishness, failure, courage, cowardice, stricture, freedom, malice. None of these things are tied to birth or gender, but we treat them as though they are, and so we have a shorthand for everyone to use . . .
The problem with using shorthand is that people tend to stop thinking in longhand.
"She can't be just 'the witch'," he says to Ahiru. "I can't figure it out, he didn't write enough. I don't understand her."
Ahiru pecks him in the arm and looks at him with her big duck eyes, and manages to convey that he's just not trying hard enough.
"Yeah, okay," he says.
--
There is something odd about knowing you are in a room with someone just as fictional as you are-which is to say, quite a bit but not completely. All the world's a stage, you could say, but most people don't get to read the first drafts of their own lives.
http://esmenet.dreamwidth.org/104925.html |
comments | Feel free to comment at Dreamwidth
Basically none of these are directly connected to each other, but I guess they could be?
Their lives are made of ink and paper, words and concepts stacked on each other in towering piles to the ceiling and back again. Flesh and physicality are not important; it is ideas that matter here.
--
Autor manages to dig up some of Drosselmeyer's old drafts in some attic or other, stacks and stacks of yellowing notebooks and paper that he dumps on Fakir's desk.
"Here. Some inspiration for you," he says crisply, and leaves. Fakir can hear what lies unsaid in the air: the story of the prince and the raven and Princess Tutu was hardly Drosselmeyer's only work. It just happened to be his last.
Fakir shores up the towers of paper, caps his inkwell, and begins to read.
Princes, princesses, knights, men-at-arms, ladies-in-waiting, clever orphans, talking animals, wise wizards and mischievous spirits. Drosselmeyer had a talent for picking up the themes of folktales and expanding them, layering dark and subtle words over a scaffold of plot. Fakir recognizes stories from his childhood here, given depth and dimension far beyond his memories of them. The words are simple and short, but the concepts are not.
He races through them, characters and scenes jumbling in his head. Some are Drosselmeyer's, but some are not. Reading has always been a good way to make himself write, and now it seems to be working more than ever. He dreams up princesses who become knights and knights who become woodcarvers and orphan girls who act like princes, pinning them down by the barest edges to paper with a few sparse words.
And then he is down to the last story, a title he does not recognize. It seems to be one of the oldest of the lot, by its deeply yellow pages and faded ink. Like a lot of these stories Autor has given him, it's unbound, merely a few sheets of paper clipped together.
The Witch, it says, in slightly wavering handwriting.
--
The Witch, though without conclusive date, is generally presumed to be one of Drosselmeyer's earlier works. It is absent of his usual heavily tragic structure, tending instead towards a lighter air of general unease. Due to this, it is (sadly) one of his lesser-known works.
However, it has its staunch defenders; one of Drosselmeyer's own descendents among them. The popular author Fakir lists it as his favorite, citing it as a critique of the whole prince-princess-witch(magician, wizard, evil talking animal, etc) system. Unlike many of Drosselmeyer's other variations on that theme, our main character here is not content to remain a despairing princess. Here is the first time in works of this period that we see a heroine become a villain, a device explored by Drosselmeyer in great detail during the latter part of his career.
*The story of Princess Tutu is unjustly famed for this, despite Kraehe being on the Raven's side from the start, and a secondary lead at best. The New Legend of Snow White is a rather better example, with the main villain as a former heroine and many hints that the current lead could fall into this role as well.
--
The world's shell is broken, shattered into bright sharp pieces, and something amazing has been born.
Outside the gates, it is summer.
Anthy has forgotten the weight of it, sticky humidity and bright hot sunlight wrapping their arms around you like an old friend. Insects buzz quietly in the plants, flies and cicadas and other things she can't remember.
So many things she has forgotten.
The road stretches out before her, wide and welcome. Her shoes tap softly on it, and she is reminded for just a moment of a the roar of a car's engine and the crash of breaking glass.
--
Prince, princess, knight, witch. These are all real enough, and they themselves are proof of that, but on some level they're just a way of thinking about things. Heroism, helplessness, selfishness, failure, courage, cowardice, stricture, freedom, malice. None of these things are tied to birth or gender, but we treat them as though they are, and so we have a shorthand for everyone to use . . .
The problem with using shorthand is that people tend to stop thinking in longhand.
"She can't be just 'the witch'," he says to Ahiru. "I can't figure it out, he didn't write enough. I don't understand her."
Ahiru pecks him in the arm and looks at him with her big duck eyes, and manages to convey that he's just not trying hard enough.
"Yeah, okay," he says.
--
There is something odd about knowing you are in a room with someone just as fictional as you are-which is to say, quite a bit but not completely. All the world's a stage, you could say, but most people don't get to read the first drafts of their own lives.
http://esmenet.dreamwidth.org/104925.html |
comments | Feel free to comment at Dreamwidth