miércoles, 31 de octubre de 2018

LA FÉE VERTE - FEUILLETON INTRODUCTION

La Fée Verte - Une nouvelle en cinq chapitres

A rather silly and somewhat strange retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen story.

Originally printed in the 2017 Advent calendar Once Upon 24 Times and owing much to Hans Christian Andersen. And CLAMP. And Kunihiko Ikuhara. And Pink Floyd. And Genesis. And William Shakespeare. And Michael Ende. And Günter Grass. And Julio Cortázar. The list is endless. 

Last year, I had the Fairytale Tarot by Lisa Hunt given to myself as an encouragement gift, right before Christmas (Spanish edition, published by Editorial Sirio). And I had the idea to let 2017's Advent Calendar be based upon the premise of drawing a card of the day from that deck and retelling the tale as a fic, a story with original characters of mine, or a poem.

It turned out to be a most pleasant surprise. Many bunnies from my old bunny farm came back, all of them pêle-mêle, thanks to that impetus.
Including the one for an Enjoltaire Snow Queen AU. A bunny which had been lying dormant for years, like a puzzle whose pieces I was struggling to put into place: Enj as Gerda and R as Kai, first things first: Grantaire is the realist at best and cynic at worst, dark-haired, stubbly, more muscular one (making him the more masculine-looking one) and he struggles with addiction but still has Enj for a guiding star and redeeming factor... Enjolras looks distinctly girly, with long golden hair, and a slender waist and limbs, and is dressed in scarlet, just like Gerda (most illustrators and character or costume designers have her wear red to symbolise the warmth of her feelings; the icing of the cake is the royal velvet ensemble in Christian Birmingham's illustrations, trimmed and frogged with golden soutaches making her look even more Enjolraic)!

You see what I mean? 

And here we can see her with Kai


And most surely Marius and Cosette as the Prince and Princess. A better-looking dark-haired bohemian and his fiancée-young wife; also, my straight OTP to mirror my queer OTP in the leading cast. And the Mariusette pairing arc in canon also mirrors the Fourth Story subplot of the fateful test-interview (not to mention Shakespeare's Portia, which was most likely the inspiration for Andersen!). The hair colour of the princess is something that fluctuates between adaptations: Christian Birmingham made her a brainy brunette, for instance, Edmond Dulac gave her powdered hair, and in the Atamanov film and Manuel Sumberac illustrations, she is a ginger. Fair nutbrown, like caffè latte, in The Fairytaler. But there are versions, like the Elspethdixon fic or the Nicki Raven retelling, or the illustrations by Sanna Annukka or Enrique Bernárdez or Rie Cramer (below), in which she is golden-haired or Titian-haired, as a young adult Gerda to her prince's young adult Kai -and of course Cosette may be the straight Enjolras to Marius's straight Grantaire!

Sanna Annukka 

 
Enrique Bernárdez


Rie Cramer



The next piece fell into place the winter before the AU was published (2016), as I did the FutureLearn MOOC course "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales", and had a chat with a French coursemate of mine. Our chat went on something like this:

  • Fabienne Ellis
  • Going back to the Robber girl...is it just me or does she remind anybody of Gavroche in Les Miserables or rather the depiction of Gavroche on Delacroix's painting "liberty leading the people",where, just like the robber girl, he brandishes his two pistols ?
    ...or maybe that is just me being far too French..










  • Sandra Elena Dermark Bufi
    Yes, she reminds me of both Éponine and Gavroche.


  • True, she has Eponine's plucky personality too ! 












  • Sandra Elena Dermark Bufi


    And she renounces to Kai to let him have his Gerda, much like Éponine when it comes to Marius (only that, unlike Éponine and the Little Mermaid, the Robber Girl does not sacrifice her own life).



  • Emma Robertson 24 NOV
    Okay, I have to see Les Miserables now!





    And from that moment on, I had cast the robber maiden in my Enjoltaire fusion. The icing on the cake is that the Thénardier girl is the spitting image of the dark-featured robber maiden!
    With her Maman as the robber woman and the rest of the Patron-Minette as the other brigands.


    Christian Birmingham

    Anastasia Arkhipova


    I felt that I had left 'Ponine to deal with the korrigans and not given Enj enough demanding tasks by means of having him run thrice around the fort. So the thorn bush came in handy; it also echoed Sleeping Beauty and added more symbolism of warmth and blood to the story and to Enj's character arc in both canon and this Snow Queen fusion.
    Rie Cramer

    Angela Barrett -- this illustration inspired A LOT of the Enjonine chapter


    But still something seemed to be amiss. It took yet another year to realise that the original Andersenian Snow Queen was not the right villainess for the story.

    After re-reading Les Misérables and re-watching Moulin Rouge that winter 2017, and then a subsequent re-read of The Silver Chair, it suddenly clicked. It just said click when I thought of the Green Faery of Absinthe, as a Lady of the Green Kirtle - click, like that - and the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. It all suddenly made sense. The shard of the shattered mirror of truth was, in consequence, replaced with absinthe - the green blood of the temptress - as the catalyst for Grand'R's downfall.




    I had the bunny for a Snow Queen Enjoltaire AU just like this one since long ago. Including whom to cast as the prince and princess, and the robber maiden (some unrequited, one-sided Enjonine, aside from obvious Mariusette!): I knew exactly how they would fit into the grand scheme of things (ie Cosette, Marius, and the Thénardier family). As well as the whole "Enj is Gerda and R is Kai" thing, and not the other way around, knowing who was the most feminine and the most masculine of the two (and, the icing on the cake: Enj is a blond in scarlet, while R has this addiction...). This classic adventure story fit this pairing, just like it fit Jaimienne, like a glove. Et voilà, it became my first Enjoltaire, and my first Mizzie, story EVER!! I figured out how to fit most of the Les Mis characters into it, for one thing. That bunny took a while to star the Green Faery as the titular villainess (I must clarify she is not my OC, but still she is the Green Faery from Moulin Rouge, with a dash of Lady of the Green Kirtle; while the Mizzie characters look as they do in the musical film of 2012... except for Enj's hairstyle: that long golden queue is from the WMT anime and the manga by Arai, aside from the SunNeko Lee manga! And I am as weak for men in low ponytails as for Enjoltaire... In the animated version, all the characters would be just like in the anime Shoujo Cosette or the Arai manga, but the Green Faery would look like Alala in Pichi Pichi Pitch!).





    Alala - though I imagine her as older and larger, though with the same Perky Female Minion personality!

      A lot of inspiration also came from the Laboulaye story "Perlino" (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12120/pg12120-images.html), a Snow Queen/Pintosmalto nineteenth-century French retelling with an addicted, frozenhearted love interest "saisi d'une soif ardente" by the drug he ingests dissolved in liquor, but saved in extremis by a persistent heroine (this is the same plot, but adding Andersen elements and at least slightly queered, starring my Mizzie OTP!).

      An illustration of a frozenhearted Perlino (in canon, like in this illustration, he looks far more like Enj than R, but no matter)

       Also, the effect of the intoxicant, including the withdrawal symptoms, is that of rauha. I just adore this take on the fairytale sleeping-draught and thought of absinthe with rauha...  There are also "Goblin Market" references in the form of that bloodstained awakening kiss... and Rossetti's poem, the third fairytale that inspired me for this AU, is also one of the great Victorian fairytales concerning drug addiction and sacrificial love, starring a queer couple (Laura and Lizzie, said to be "sisters," and living under the same roof; but, just like the "sibling" bond of Gerda and Kai, or Enj and R for that matter, this may rather be referring to moirallegiance). The final releasing kiss, that thaws the frozen heart, and much of the scene there I paraphrased in prose from "Goblin Market", in particular from this illustration (just think these two are Enj and R, hair colour obvious, and not Lizzie and Laura respectively)!



      The potion being made from the villainess's blood and trapping the antihero in an addiction-fueled toxic relationship is from the cautionary tale "La adormidera" in the collection La vida de las flores, another of my sources. The story being a cautionary tale, however, ends in a far more tragic fashion - unlike Kai or Laura, Martín has no one to look after him and save his life, and he dies of an overdose. 

      From the MOOC, I also took another Andersenian element that I mentioned as being echoed by Oscar Wilde in my comments, the painful ordeal of embracing a thornbush: As for the barren thornbush that blossoms when watered with heart's blood once a loving character's chest is pushed against the thorns...
      That qualifying test of warming the thornbush had always been a poignant image, all the way since childhood. Jacob Böggild, the educator on the MOOC, gave the following analysis of the qualifying test of the thorns:
      [···] contains several of the basic components of the folk tale.
      [···] initiates a quest to get [···] back. Before being able to meet and fight [···] adversary, [···] must overcome a number of obstacles. 
      Firstly, in order to acquire information about which way to go, [···] must [···] and then warm up the thorn bush with heart blood. 
      But the story is also a psychological allegory; an allegory about what one could call the work of mourning.
      [···] mental pain is then translated into physical pain by the thorns which draw blood. 
      And I replied to Böggild: "as for the thorns-into-chest-heart's-blood-make-barren-rose-bush-blossom, it's such a beautiful metaphor for the good that can spring out of suffering." So a thread sprung from this, just like the Éponine/robber maiden simile:


      Thank you for pointing to the other similar 'rose/thorn' stories. I read the episode as partly physical pain, but also indicating the psychological pain or sharing pain with others - other people benefited from empathy.

      -----------------------------

      I would add to the symbols of deep sorrow the scene with thorn bushes. If 
       [···], can the scene with the bushes, when  [···] clasps the bushes to  [···] breast and they go deep into [···] flesh and blood comes out, symbolise that  [···]  hurts [···]self unconciously in pain?
      Jacob BøggildLEAD EDUCATOR
      i think the physical pain reflects or symbolizes mental or psychic pain, Gayane.



      Marianne Stecher-Hansen points out that "this sacrifice may represent the creator's sacrifices for their art: when one's blood flows for the thorn bush, it is the artist offering their heart to the public." Just like both Enjolras and Yours Truly, and so many other authors who have echoed the motif, have done. The motif has been echoed in subsequent literary tales by Oscar Wilde and Magda Bergquist. 
      I just felt that such a cathartic motif would never be out of place in an Enjoltaire gothic fusion fic like this; it encapsulates Enjolras' character perfectly (and also echoes the refrain of La Marseillaise to a certain degree = ie the blood that will water the meadows and furrows of France). That qualifying test of warming the thornbush had always been a poignant image, all the way since childhood. I felt that I had left 'Ponine to deal with the korrigans and not given Enj enough demanding tasks by means of having him run thrice around the fort. So the thorn bush came in handy; it also echoed Sleeping Beauty (the prince making his way through) and the Tireur d'Épine in the first chapter, and added more symbolism of warmth and blood and hearts/chests to the story and to Enj's character arc in both canon and this Snow Queen fusion. Furthermore, the Biedermeier (early Victorian idyl) style in which the original tale is written unfurled in the 1820s-1830s that are most popular choice of setting for illustrators, theatre groups, and filmmakers when it comes to adapting Andersenian tales. The same historical setting of Les Misérables, long story short.
      As the AU went on, it gradually unfurled into a novella, even longer than the French versions that Louis Moland and Alexandre Dumas translated of "La Reine des Neiges" by adding more detail (their mis-translation of Finnmark as "la Finlande" aside). And that notwithstanding that I pruned away all the big-lipped alligator moments in the Andersenian tale: the middle and last thirds of Story the Third (the whole flower garden of eternal springtime) and the first half of Story the Sixth (the Saami wise woman, just like a bureaucrat, merely redirects Gerda to the Finnmark wise woman with a message to deliver). So, cutting out all these big-lipped alligator moments, the basic story of The Snow Queen fits neatly into a classical Shakespearean five-act structure, I thought; and the five-act structure was implemented into this Enjoltaire fusion.

      Also, Éponine became a Finnwoman+Robber-Maiden composite. I couldn't find the right people in the Mis-verse... I thought of casting Fauchelevent/Valjean as the owner of the springtime garden, but I was obliged to portray him as Cosette's guardian, so I have skipped that chapter entirely (and got earlier to Mariusette)... Ditto for finding out who would be the Finnwoman.

      Then there was the inspiration from Shakespeare, from symphonic rock tunes and lyrics (Genesis: mainly Lilywhite Lilith, The Musical Box, and The Fountain of Salmacis - Pink Floyd: Crazy Diamond, Lunatic, Wish You Were Here, any song dedicated by Roger Waters to Syd Barrett [might as well be an Enjoltaire song, sent from the leader to the drugged prodigal without whom, at the end of the day, makes the group what it is]- Yes: that Roundabout that became the ending tune to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure sagas 1 and 2), from Celtic lore, from Mylène Farmer videoclips (where the French popstar has always got something of Éponine in her), from One Piece (kuroashi fighting style, which was inspired by savate), from the anime adaptations of CLAMP manga series, and many other sources; aside from my own Mediterranean upbringing and first brushes with the Scandinavian climate...

      *********************************************
      It wound up being faaaaaar longer than its Westerosi counterpart and spiritual predecessor, The Queen Beyond the Wall, because there is so much more lore (knowledge, culture...) to nineteenth-century France, and to nineteenth-century Europe as a whole, than to Westeros!
      However, the story "La Fée Verte" I have published for Once Upon 24 Times was sentenced to be but a Director's Cut, due to the constraints of the size limits of blog posts.
      It seems that La Fée Verte is exceeding the length allowed by the size limits -I have had this problem before with other fics-. So I cut out most of the commentaries -and the epilogue- from the original document in order to make it fit. I hope I can write as much as I want about this world and these characters... I wish I could, indeed. XOXO
      As mentioned earlier, if your one post already exceeds the 1MB limit, there is little you can do except to split that article into separate posts.
      "Your readers might be happy, if you were to segment your narrative..." I heard that advice and resolved to pay heed to it.
      There is autopagination. So there is nothing to do but surrender, and leave this as but a draft-first version-director's cut of the integral story (ditto for the Baratheon saga, I must say).
      And thus, for this year's Samhain (this is a pretty adult, scary version, though not bereft of fluff) I decided to post the uncut version in chapters.

      lunes, 29 de octubre de 2018

      THE PIRATES OF SAMHAIN

      Hugtto Pretty Cure
      Episode 38 - My Own Review

      THE PIRATES OF SAMHAIN

      In the beginning of the episode, Harry and Hug-tan were wondering what with the Halloween decorations near the park and asked the girls about it. (Not after seeing a Halloween poster that scared the heck out of Harry and Hug-tan)


      Hugtan decides to investigate, and is immediately freaked out. Harry has a similar reaction after he takes a look to see what made Hugtan cry. It’s a poster for a big Halloween event that is being sponsored by Hugman and Sumire’s magazine, so Hana thought she’d help out by designing a poster.

      Emiru likes kaiju

      The main event is a costume dance party, with the theme being dreams; that they just dress up as whatever they like. For Emiru, that would be a reptilian monster, whilst for Saaya it would be a megazord. Everyone is getting into the Halloween spirit, but there are two or three who don’t quite understand.


      Ruru and Harry don’t really get Halloween
      It falls to the others to explain just what Halloween is about. 
      Saaya, being more informed, looks it up and tells them that the 31st of October was the night where the ancient Celts ancestors’ spirits would return to them. Samhain, pronounced SAA-win.
      Lulu and Harry still don’t quite get it, so Emiru decides that they should just go a little overboard to make up for it.





      Saaya and Lulu remain as competitive as ever
      Following that, everyone starts preparing for the Halloween event. 



      I don't think I even seen kids dressed up as Precures in previous seasons but it is nice to see the townspeople acknowledging the Precures.

      Lulu didn't understand either about Halloween and the other girls showed them by getting decorations and costumes and learning more about Halloween. Harry commented that their world does not have Halloween since Crisis took over the world in their timeline. Harry and Hug-tan later walked around the festival and felt a sense of regret; he was hugging Hug-tan tightly and something was going on with him...
      The event starts, and Harry is looking a little sad. He quickly puts that behind him, and focuses on the event. Of course, – the other girls are in their costumes as well.




      I guess Saaya chose to be a fallen angel for Halloween. I like it

      Lulu and Emiru looked wonderful as Pirate girls!
      Seeing our Twin Love OTP as pirates, well, in pirate costumes means that the Master & Commander analogy is still red hot (well, Jack and Steve were royal officers, not pirates, but still heroes of the Age of Sail)... Even though Emiru still wanted a reptilian kaiju suit... PS. When is Talk Like A Pirate Day? The 19th of Sept, over a month ago...

      Emiru and Lulu dressed as pirates – so good


      It’s not just our friends who are preparing. Even Daigan is making sweets, though he finds himself struggling a bit with the finer points. He also gets an unexpected visitor.

      Papple and Charalit were out promoting their agency while Daigan was left with the food decorations. (With little success) Ristle appeared and offered Daigan a high position at Crisis. 

      Ristle tells Daigan he can return to Criasu

      Ristle shows up, and tells Daigan that he is welcome to go back to Criasu if he wants. He doesn’t have to decide immediately, but Ristle does give him a business card.


      Although Daigan refused, Ristle left his card behind and Daigan placed in his pocket when Papple and Charalit returned.



      The girls also happen to have several costumes for Hugtan to wear. They have a try a few, but that only increases Hugtan’s weariness levels.

      Lulu detects that Angel!Hugtan’s weariness has increased by 78%
      The girls stop dressing Hugtan in different costumes, and Hana just asks what she wants to dress up. Hugtan simply wants to dress as a PreCure. With that, the girls decide to get to work on Hugtan’s costume.





      Daigan finds himself unable to resist the allure of Criasu, so he ends up summoning a Wild Theender. As it causes havoc at the event, the others go to confront. 

      Later, Daigan was getting annoyed over his food decorations and saw a girl complaining of friction blisters and is giving out negative energy. He decided to create a theender from the girl and was wrecking havoc in the festival.


      A super special Halloween PreCure show
      The fight against the Wild Theender is framed as part of the event, with each PreCure getting in an attack against their foe before they finish it off.

      The girls entered the battle but they decided to make it part of the show in order to calm the crowd. Of course, the girls won and Daigan was left in defeat. Papple knew something was wrong with him and reprimanded him. She commented that people are enjoying his sweets and he learned his lesson already.


      Papple admonishes Daigan

      After the battle, Papple finds Daigan and gives him a good smack on the head. She also lets him know that the treats he made went down really well with the kids. All that hard work paid off.





      Following that, Harry talks about how things would be if time stops, but is assured that the others will be there to meet the future head on.

      Hugtan’s costume change is complete

      After hearing from Saaya that Halloween or Samhain is a festival to remember the dearest who were lost to them, Harry felt a sense of sorrow and couldn't help thinking about his world. He told that he has no idea what kind of festivals they have since Crisis has his world in this freeze state. Luckily, the others gave some word of encouragement and promised him that they will free his world from Crisis.


      Hug-Tan wore a Precure costume and everyone adore her. Although Harry swore he saw a blonde figure that looked like an older Hug-tan as a Precure!? But he kept mum (pun intended) about it as they continue to celebrate Halloween...


      A familiar face briefly appears before Harry
      The episode ends with everyone deciding to enjoy the rest of the night.



      Despite being a Halloween episode, it is more of a set-up for the next few episodes as we are approaching the final quarter of the season. The focus was on Harry and Hug-tan since we learn that there was no concept of festivals or celebration since everyone was frozen in time by Crisis. Harry in particular felt that he lost a lot of things in his time and after seeing everyone happily celebrating, he knew that they must succeed in freeing everyone from his timeline. 
      You got to love the shot of Harry walking past in shadows, as it showed that he still has secrets yet to reveal to the girls and probably knew the true identify of Hug-tan. Seeing now it is confirmed that Hug-Tan is a Precure from the future and was reverted into a toddler for some reason. Furthermore, Ristle was getting desperate after failing to recruit Daigan and seeing how the next episode preview, he finally did the unthinkable and brought the girls and Harry to the future. A showdown is inevitable.





      MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
      Seeing our Twin Love OTP as pirates, well, in pirate costumes means that the Master & Commander analogy is still red hot (well, Jack and Steve were royal officers, not pirates, but still heroes of the Age of Sail)... Even though Emiru still wanted a reptilian kaiju suit... PS. When is Talk Like A Pirate Day? The 19th of Sept, over a month ago...
      Harry went for a furry... I mean, lycan ensemble with ears, tail, and paws in a silver gray and matching whisker and snout make-up, and, just like Lulu, he hails from a dystopian future where autumnal celebrations are something that has not been celebrated for decades, or maybe even centuries. As expected, it was Saaya who gave the two time-travellers a lecture on Samhain -pronounced SAA-wan or SAA-win; Celtic orthographies are deeper than the Marianas Trench- and later on dressed as a fallen angel (when I had expected something more druidic; voilà, she overturned her angelic transformed mode by making it all dark and leathery)... Werewolf!Harry was a nice touch to his characterisation as the Beast, while Homare went in a ten-gallon hat instead of... Wait. Jessie. Belle. Jessie-Belle. Jezebel... I see what you did there for a visual pun (smirk!).
      Also... did Harry just remember Lenore? All while not identifying Homare as her? #FriendZone! The fact that he also saw Lenore in Hug-tan made me also think of the theory (we'll see if it's canon, but it's the most likely scenario) that Lenore is Hug-tan as an adult! (If not, there is always the possibility of a Les Mis AU where Lenore is Fantine, Harry is Valjean, and Hug-tan is Cosette -Ristle would be Javert, Papple and Daigan would make excellent Thénardiers, and Henrisato as Enjoltaire in a barricade subplot would be the icing on the cake!-...)

      Daigan is back to the dark side, but only for today because he was under pressure... Also, at his sweetstand he sold moray eel-shaped sweets (patterned after the Muraena helena, or Mediterranean moray). Also, Ristle pulling His Card out once more. But Daigan's Moment of Weakness came, this time, from a pretty stubborn chocolate pen. So much ado about nothing!
      The victim and source of the week was a twenty-something trick-or-treater, dressed as a ghost ragdoll, who is upset when she got a friction blister when walking, right when the festival's costume contest was about to begin, and thus thought that it was the worst time for her to get a friction blister (she hadn't pocketed any painkillers or bandages)...
      The post-battle twit-slap Papple gave Daigan was adorable. I can already see this straight woman and funny guy as husband and wife, of the kind that have been married for decades - and Charalit as either their child or nephew.
      This was a fun episode. Emiru and Lulu (our les OTP for this continuity) wearing matching pirate outfits was great, and I do like Saaya’s fallen angel costume a lot as well.
      We got some more hints about the connection between Harry and Hugtan. I am curious about the ‘lost things stay lost’ line though. Speculation suggests that Hugtan’s true form is the girl Harry sees at the end of the episode, but Hugtan hasn’t exactly been lost. I wonder if the situation is a little more complicated than that.
      This episode had some great funny moments as well. I’m glad to see that Saaya and Lulu remain competitive with each other. A decent Halloween episode.