Writer's Block: I wanna be just like you

[igenlode]

[Error: unknown template qotd]One of my own fictional characters, Danik von Schelstein, has been known to come and 'encourage' me (or simply subject me to scorn) at moments of physical exhaustion into behaving as he would have done, i.e. back straight, throw your heart into it, and never let your weakness show! Unfortunately he can't actually help physically due to being in the wrong universe... but the admonitions do actually have an effect...

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[capriuni.livejournal.com]

*Grins broadly*

Ahh... Danik!

[igenlode.livejournal.com]

Bright Danik :-D

It's a pity you never got to meet young Markus... known, inevitably, as Marek to everyone except his mother; between themselves he is always Marc.

Imagine a small version of Danik at five... with lots of adoring big 'sisters'! (Various domestic problems were mutually arranged when Osman and L'Aiglonne implemented an effective 'swap'; he gets to spend more time at home with his family (and her son) while she gets to sail with her husband (and some of the Osman daughters - no guesses as to which).)


But I'm all tied up with a different set of characters now. I started writing fanfic (for a very broad definition of 'writing' and 'fanfic'; about 18 months' worth of plot summary with half a dozen various scenes) about this film before Christmas, and haven't (quite) stopped yet. Thus, given the circulation of this particular [silent] movie, creating a fandom of approximately one person...

Have you ever had the feeling that you really, really wanted to change the ending of someone else's story? Well, I did... only to find that I still couldn't untangle my three characters, who have been through various permutations but can't seem to find a mutually satisfactory alignment (every time I think they have, someone just gets hurt again *sigh*)

It's the story of 'Handsome' Williams, a 1920s gangster (or, to be technically accurate, a speakeasy owner; he doesn't actually run illegal liquor himself, he just hijacks it from the bootleggers, who aren't exactly in a position to complain to the law... but it's a good way to get some very powerful enemies) -- a crude, passionate, violent man who is morbidly sensitive about his own ugliness -- who falls incongruously in love with a blind violinist whom he hears playing in the street; other girls laugh at him, but this one doesn't, and she blossoms under his gentleness towards her and obvious admiration. But he is terrified that if she ever finds out what he really looks like, she will find him repulsive; so he does a Cyrano de Bergerac -- he gets a handsome stand-in in the shape of Dan, the speakeasy's piano-player, who owes him a debt of gratitude. What hasn't even occurred to him is that the other man -- a gentle musician who really has far more in common with the girl than he has -- will proceed to fall in love with her himself...

Of course the blind girl, Nora, eventually finds out; but she has ended up falling in love with both the very different men who have been courting her in the guise of a single person, and there just doesn't seem to be any satisfactory way of sorting the three of them out. Dan ends up by renouncing her in favour of his rival (because he's noble like that... and because he is convinced that Handsome is the one she really loves for himself), but when Handsome does eventually manage to win and marry her -- after she runs away from them both, unable to bear the atmosphere of enmity -- it doesn't stop Dan from still helplessly loving her or her, as she eventually realises, from loving him in addition to the husband to whom she means everything in the world. Or Handsome being violently jealous of Dan's good looks and her affection for him. Or Dan being painfully jealous of the privileged position that the other man holds both in her life and in her heart. Or Handsome from trusting Dan, above any other man, to take care of her when he can't... or Dan, eventually, from being unable to trust himself with her...

(Or Nora herself from being suspected of murder, when a woman from Handsome's past life turns up bent on revenge and an innocent bystander gets hurt; ironically, she subsequently does commit what threatens to be a murder, when a man assaults her, and at the date of writing at least nobody suspects it at all.)