Notebook 2

Today marks the end of my second notebook (10/2006-07/2007). It's scary that almost none of it is entered in my Google notebook, but it's good that I've filled it with a lot of self-dialogue and ideas for DS.

One of the ideas today was to make Hitomi's transport from Earth to Gaea at the end of ch1 more significant in the overall plot. Gem had requested me to make Hitomi go through a depression, and while I think of Hitomi as too splunky to get real depression, a great spin-off possibility is to have her go through self-doubt in the midst of great expectations. Hitomi is the type to emerge stronger emotionally from adversity, and this experience would become her pivotal point in DS.

I was reminded of Nase in Hikaru no Go, at the end of the go pro examinations, when she said "Because I can play like today, I can't quit go." (That's sort of how I feel about my life now, too :P)


I cannot remember where I got this image. Probably from Lizzard. It's interesting to see the other Knights of Caeli:

Names

Random names, might be used for characters, might be used for locations:

Besnik - Sulare - Taussler - Stenin - Heriz - Jonam - Vosnik - Osarnum - Zare - Elat - Guerdia - Zossler - Tare - Kulot - Phi - Palome - Olam - Emon - Krisnet - Mossi - Basile - Digge - Malek - Nolan - Torron - Nauntig - Ala'Ramutad - Nafarem - Hamorfa - Guern - Vort - Epautib - Kalev - Vonui

1. Some are pretty crappy, I know. I don't want to use any normal names, because it's Gaea.

2. Would using names like Ala'Ramutad for a distant country be too politically incorrect?

3. I think of the names in Japanese pronounciation (eg. Balgus = Barugesu), so names like Zare is two syllables instead of one. But then the pretension that carries with a phonetic explanation at the end of a ch is probably more serious than reading it wrong.

4. Votes for names? Other ideas?

Van's Allure 2

For some reason (I am a strange cookie in many other ways, too), I don't prefer to work on the entirety of my story alone, then surprise everybody. I like to muse on something for a while, bounce ideas off a buddy, come back and do more revisions, then post. Adding a perspective has only worked out in my experience for the better.

Chocolatelova's been busy and it seems bad to bother her with my story when she doesn't have time to do her own, but perhaps I'll try catching her online D: My principal conflict is still ill-formed and so blah. blah blah blah.


Well, on to the non-whiny part of the post.

As I have mentioned before, Van's greatest attraction is the juxtaposition of his seriousness and his boyish self. To me, the boyish self is actually his natural self--selfish and a little spoiled, but with eagerness and full emotions--the self that comes out in front of Folken when they were young, in front of his mother, in front of Balgus, in front of Hitomi. The seriousness is his attempt to be a man, to be a king.

At the end of Esca, we are frustrated not only because V+H never really gets together, but also because we are left with a glimpse of an emerging Van, close on a path to balance between his two halves.

(I always thought of Van as the main character, actually.)

So one of the items I am exploring for DS is completion of this duality. A lot of fanfics on ff portray Van despising his burdensome responsibilities, but I don't think Van ever thought about it as a choice. He was born to be a king. His public and private lives are so enmeshed in him that they have instead become two intertwining parts of his personality. Duty is his life. But he is also just a man.

(I hope I will be able to do it. I really like writing Van.)

(Sometimes I feel like I write better essays than prose ; ; I write very pretentiously, I suppose.)


I forgot from where I grabbed this . It looks like a scan or a rough filter, but still a perfect Van.

Sources

Hello, hello!

My thoughts today jumped from the emerging central political conflict to the Tyrrhenia legacy. It had been in my mind for quite a while, bubbling and fermenting, but today's development was glorious.

We shall have our own version of Elysian Fields: "down the dank moldering paths and past the Ocean's streams they went, and past the White Rock and the Sun's Western Gates, and past the Land of Dreams, and soon they reached the fields where pale liliaceous asphodel and poplars grew." It will be a place to press into climax; a place for rest, cleansing, and comtemplation; and a place for graceful lamentation.

I am in debt to past books. LOTR, Chinese martial arts novels, the classics, Jane Austen--these all form the knowledge I draw from. No idea is ever original. Everything is simply an arrangement of a story we all already know.


Oh, I did write something this past week, so let's have it. I think I might have posted the previous version of this section, in Leal's POV. Van's is working out much better, and today you get a whole paragraph!

Leal had insisted that a wise king used the illusion of power as well as the practice of authority, though to Van's mind there was no real need. Even in the most remote countryside, his people have no trouble recognizing the crest on his sword and his mailed, trailing entourage. Leal and the rest overlook the importance inherent in the common shirt. His rule over Fanelia only benefited from his royal informalities: loyalty that could never be commanded by a "Sire" or even a "King Fanel", only only by a "Van-sama".

And now that I've written--my previous fears are unfounded, thank god. Nothing is ever so important in life as to keep going forward.


The asphodel: