No, not Patreon! No typos, here, you! The old school patron! I am in modest need of income to offset upcoming bills these next several months. So if you like original music for your project(s), but stressed about budget or AI scams, do I have the solution for you! Or both of us, you could say! *Double finger points*
I am a soundtrack composer of much range and experience, and can have you covered if you like beautiful emotional soundtracks, weird experimental compositions, horror, ambience, and all sorts of instrumentals. And yes, for those with fully realized soundtracks of ample tracks, I do love me some themes/leitmotifs. As heard below!
I'm currently looking for a small group of people who are interested in my unique style of music, that would be willing to pay monthly for a few months for the following reasons:
To stay away from my near-literally thankless job at Walmart Automotive
Have a dedicated day of making music every week instead of squeezing it in on busy weekends where I'm doing "Women of Xal II" production work. (Among other things)
Make paying for upcoming Bills of Necessary Inconvenience less a practice in futility
So What's the Cost???
Typically, it's $250USD for up to 90 seconds due to time constraints, but the goal is to find folks who need music/payments monthly throughout 2026. That makes monthly rates negotiable. (Depending on what is wanted, how many months, and how many others are adding to the pool.)
So please! If you have a video game, or a particularly bold series, feel free to contact me via email or Discord! Clients that cover the bulk of the monthly quota get priority!
No, not Patreon! No typos, here, you! The old school patron! I am in modest need of income to offset upcoming bills these next several months. So if you like original music for your project(s), but stressed about budget or AI scams, do I have the solution for you! Or both of us, you could say! *Double finger points*
I am a soundtrack composer of much range and experience, and can have you covered if you like beautiful emotional soundtracks, weird experimental compositions, horror, ambience, and all sorts of instrumentals. And yes, for those with fully realized soundtracks of ample tracks, I do love me some themes/leitmotifs. As heard below!
I'm currently looking for a small group of people who are interested in my unique style of music, that would be willing to pay monthly for a few months for the following reasons:
To stay away from my near-literally thankless job at Walmart Automotive
Have a dedicated day of making music every week instead of squeezing it in on busy weekends where I'm doing "Women of Xal II" production work. (Among other things)
Make paying for upcoming Bills of Necessary Inconvenience less a practice in futility
So What's the Cost???
Typically, it's $250USD for up to 90 seconds due to time constraints, but the goal is to find folks who need music/payments monthly throughout 2026. That makes monthly rates negotiable. (Depending on what is wanted, how many months, and how many others are adding to the pool.)
So please! If you have a video game, or a particularly bold series, feel free to contact me via email or Discord! Clients that cover the bulk of the monthly quota get priority!
I posted these separately a long while back, but I thought I'd compile them into a single post for easy viewing!
Here's the storyboard videos of the first two chapters of my Princess Tutu fanfic, Chapter of the Bird! They have a full soundtrack but are silently subtitled rather than voiced. Maybe I'll make a voiced version one of these days tho!
Want more? I made a video of episode previews based on the fanfic that I did dub! Might have implicit spoilers since it has all the episode previews from start to finish, but it doesn't give away too much hehe!
Should I make more storyboard videos of Chapter of the Bird next?
After the Raven was vanquished and the town of Kinkan returned to normal, the resulting short-lived peace is disturbed by news of raven attacks in a neighboring town. What could be behind them? Are the people of Kinkan Town truly free from the strings of its dark past, or do remnants of it still haunt their supposedly happy endings?
I’ve finally finished my Princess Tutu post-series fanfic! Let me know what you think!
(Image is a fanart for the fanfiction by Mangaka-chan)
Man... saying I'm a fanfic writer is a bit of a misnomer because I've only written a handful, buuuuuut I did work on one for over 12 years, so I'll say that counts? As for which one, I'm debating between crying and help me? (Tho... lately it's prolly been help me because I'm pretty sure I need help but do I really write that good I don't believe it >_> <_< )
This VN got successfully Kickstarter funded in a very epic eleventh hour way two months ago! If you like political and/or psychological horror epic VNs, go play the first one so you can get the context for the continuation now in development! I hear its branches are pretty complex so you might need the time to figure everything out lol.
Part 14 and the last of my series of extended author's notes of my Princess Tutu fanfic, Chapter of the Bird. This isn't for a particular chapter but the fic overall. You can see the previous episode notes by looking up the "author's note" tag on this blog.
Afterword--
I guess I can't overstate how important this fanfic was, and is, to me. From start to finish, twelve whole years passed, with a consecutive seven of them in an unspoken hiatus. The process of creating this story lasted through my entire adolescence into most of my twenties; I pretty much grew up with it.
I could not have imagined back then where I'd be today, in so many ways. But looking back at it now, I know that regardless of this fanfic's fate, regardless of its eventual significance (or lack thereof) to the world, regardless even of where my own life ultimately ends up, I will never regret my success in reaching the culmination of this fanfic. There are many moments now where I doubt the worth of my creations; even in those times, I still cannot deny I was satisfied with what I made here. That's saying a lot.
By no means do I consider it perfect—far from it! At times I wince at parts of the earlier chapters, written when I was much less seasoned in writing and life in general. While I composed the story as a contiguous narrative from start to finish, you may detect a shift in the writing style from the first three or four acts to the rest of the story, between being where my seven-year-hiatus happened.
The first seed ideas of the story didn't revolve around the main antagonist, or even Sagi, despite the fact that those two are crucial players in the central plot. It was in fact Trutho, inspired from a whim to edit a screenshot to change the color of Mytho's eyes. I mused that perhaps it could be Mytho's long-lost twin brother, and when I put it together with the idea to reference The Prince and the Pauper, it set off the first train of thoughts for this fanfic.
I'm unsure whether Sagi or Caras came first after this, but the two were imagined in separate contexts, and only later did I realize their destinies would be so closely entwined.
Sagi of course came from the idea of another bird gaining a human form like Ahiru, so naturally the two would get to know each other at the lake where Ahiru resides at the end of the canon series. A duck is a quintessential waterfowl, and a great blue heronis as well, yet the two species have vastly different lores. The common mental image of the heron as serene and quiet set down a strong foundation for Sagi's personality.
While the same demeanor could describe the swan, a heron is not quite the same symbol of beauty and elegance. Serenity isn't quite equivalent to grace. There was a unique place the heron could have as a bird character in this universe distinct from the existing birds, and it didn't take long for me to grow very fond of her.
As for Caras, his first inspirations I remember stemmed from a whimsical doodle of a character resembling a male version of Rue. I thought, what if the Raven was reincarnated as a young boy, like the knight had been for Fakir? At first I had imagined a preadolescent boy, but the sketch soon developed into an adolescent like the rest of the cast, and the "young boy" image fell by the wayside.
However, that initial image became important later when I began mulling over Caras's backstory. I'd been having trouble finding ideas that felt right, but when I recalled that protoypical mental image of him, I thought perhaps that young boy was still relevant—as his past self. Somehow from there, the boy's story seemed to write itself.
When the seven year hiatus happened, I was hit with a writer's block I tried so desperately to break out of. It drove me to such sideroads as a spell of online written roleplay, where my primary motivation was to inspire myself to write this story again. To this end, I included Caras in my RP roster, despite him being the only character in it from my fanfic's canon.
Anyone who kept track of how I played could notice that of my characters, he was the one I was most hesitant to bring out. That was easily because he was the most difficult for me to write of them, by far. It wasn't that I didn't understand his character: rather, approaching that world from his point of view was far from what I was comfortable with. Portraying his persona, knowing what he felt about things, receiving secondhand the consequences of his way of interacting—these things diametrically opposed how I myself lived.
Where I'd be ashamed, he'd be unapologetic. Where I'd instinctively mollify others, he'd naturally intimidate. Where I'd be paralyzed with self-doubt, he wouldn't hesitate to act. Where I'd fear hurting others, he'd resent being hindered by them. Where I felt weak and insufficient, he felt unstoppable. Despite his significant negative traits, some of his other strongest ones I yearned for even a fraction of.
Needless to say, I could never be him, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be. But I think the very effort of creating him as faithfully as I could allowed me an alternate window to the world I may not have dared to peek through on my own. Even if it was difficult for me, viewing the world so deeply through his eyes made me a little stronger on the inside, I think.
As the central antagonist, he drives the protagonists into places they otherwise would not have gone. Even though our heroes continuously fail to stop him, in the end neither of them would have gotten what they really wanted without the other one having gotten in their way.
While it's clear who wears black and who wears white, who helps and who hurts, it was important to me that the only purely evil things here are the tragedies of suffering. I have been told that some people are just incorridgibly evil, that there is an impermeable line between them and everyone else. When it came to stories, I've been told even more often that "to have a good story, you have to have a good villain". But often it's seen as one of those "incorrigibly evil" people who make you really want to see them defeated by the "heroes". The truism goes that the villains should believe whatever they're doing, however malevolent it may be, is justified and "right" in whatever twisted way they come up with.
I think Caras technically meets some of those conditions. The story overall humanizes the Raven (both figuratively and literally), so Caras couldn't fairly fall under the "true evil" banner anyway. The Raven, on the other hand, is repeatedly referred to as a "monster", and this assertion isn't refuted in the fanfic. On his own, the Raven is a classic "Big Bad" through and through, just like in canon.
So, then, is the true antagonist of this story the Raven, distinct from the character Caras, who is but a mere misguided soul mixed up with him? The story makes a point of showing how blurred the line between them is, and even at the end, the question of whether or not Caras and the Raven can be considered the same person isn't directly answered.
I imagine those relating to Sagi's point of view feel bad for what he's gone through, and like her, don't want to see him come to a horrible end. Even as she wants to stop him, she wants to save him too—and she isn't willing to sacrifice one goal for the other.
We normally think of an innocent, good person as the one who can be saved, and saving a villain is often a mere "salvation in death", mercifully ending their inescapable misery. Such is even said by Prince Siegfried when he has the chance to get rid of Caras once and for all. Yet, it's because Mytho's compassion extended to even his archenemy despite his own principles, that Caras could reawaken with his memories returned. Ironically, if Mytho had instead succeeded in vanquishing him, the story may well have had a more tragic conclusion.
Then, does that disqualify Caras from being a villain at all, when we would surely not argue that the Raven is a genuine villain? If so, then would it still make sense if we also believed Caras and the Raven to be one and the same?
That brings me to how Caras viewed his own actions, and indeed, his very self. If Caras believed he was doing the "right" thing, that would make him "the hero of his own story", which is how some antagonists justify their motives. Their convictions are what drive them to villainy, despite all who oppose them. To say Caras has conviction is an understatement, but does he believe he's "right"?
Despite being so determined to accomplish his goals, he has no illusions about the morality of his actions. By no means does he see himself as a wrongly persecuted hero; on the contrary, he views himself as a bane to those around him. What he wants to do is *wrong*, and he knows it, but that doesn't matter to him. As far as he's concerned, he will destroy even the world to get what he wants, because that's who he is, who he must be. If anything he does is "right" to him, it's that he must follow the indelible destiny he made, to be the villain he created of himself.
One may doubt someone so willfully "evil" has a real character at all. They might as well be black cardboard cutouts with "Demon Lord" scribbled on them. Without "real" characters, a story loses all sense of reality and life, becoming but an empty, soulless puppet show. So isn't a character like that an immediate trip back to the drawing board? What could possibly motivate someone to become the monster of monsters terrorizing the world, and so desperately?
The easy answer is that they enjoy it, full stop. They delight inseeing others suffer, not giving a care about the consequences if it doesn't cause inconvenience to themselves. And many villains are like that. They are the classic go-to personality for when there needs to be no doubt that the villain urgently has to be taken down. For stories that focus on how the protagonists can defeat a villain despite overwhelming odds, the inner emotions of the villain aren't as important as the villain's power to oppose the heroes; after all, if it were easy to defeat the villain, there wouldn't be much of a story.
However, what about someone who isn't inherently cruel and sadistic? Can an ordinary person, or even an extraordinarily good one, be such a villain? How could someone truly admirable ever willingly be a character like the Raven? It was this question I carried in my mind as I developed Caras's backstory, and his future paths.
Sagi ends up pursuing those questions most relentlessly of anyone in the story. She is the fic's one primary character lacking a history with Caras, and thus able to meet him with a clean slate.
You could even say their destinies brought them together, as otherwise neither one had a particular reason to get to know the other. Yet, because they did, because she kept questioning him even as he stormed ahead, new paths appeared for him to take. Even as he repeatedly turned away from them, Sagi insisted on keeping them open for him until the eleventh hour when he finally chose to take them. Ironically, it ended up allowing the heroes to triumph in a way they couldn't have otherwise.
For Odin as a child, that overwhelming sense of despair, of feeling "no escape" from a terrible and inevitable doom, is among the things that drove him off the deep end. Understanding this despair, or at least appreciating it, is key to answering the earlier question of what can drive a strong heart to warp into such a horror. While he chose the dreadful path he followed, and thus is still responsible for the harm he's caused, it would wrong him and many others to believe his choices to be pure evil. As the story shows, had he taken but a few alternative actions, his life could have been completely different. Moreover, those crucial turning points were not trite judgments of what was right or wrong, but of the willingness to show "weakness", self-doubt, and to ask for help, gaining insight on how to find the best outcome for everyone—including oneself.
Sometimes heroes cry. Sometimes they falter. Sometimes they even lose all hope. But even in the deepest darkness, if they can take still another step onward, even if they don't know any way out of the endless abyss into which they fell, they may yet find an unknown path to the dawn.
There were many other ideas expanding the world of Princess Tutu that were explored in this fanfic, but the villain's journey of discovering himself ended up being the real heart (pun only partly intended) of this story, the part that grips me the most even now, years after finishing it.
As for why that is so… I went through a whole lot during those 12 years writing this story, and I'm sure that many harrowing emotions from that time were woven into this tale in deeper ways than I might realize. If the online reviews are any measure, it seems even a number of readers picked up on how much I poured into this story. For me, it's not just a fanfic—it's a testament to the inner strife that has drastically shaped who I am today, as well as the struggles I still face. I may never really understand the troubles you've known, Odin, but even then, I say from my heart: I, too, know something of despair.
The very reason this book was made is so I can hold in my hand something very important to me. If you find this story means something to you too, then I'm glad I can share this book with you.
I hope you enjoyed the story. Thank you so much for reading.
Three days ago was the 10th anniversary of the release of my short visual novel, Groups of Two! To celebrate, I've uploaded the game to Itch.io as freeware! I developed the story, wrote the script, drew the artwork, and programmed the game, as well as voiced the main protagonist, Ms. Anderson! @plottwiststudios composed the music, and the other voice actors are credited in the game and the download page's description.
A mini visual novel about a classroom's first day of school.
Part 13 of my series of extended author's notes of my Princess Tutu fanfic, Chapter of the Bird. You can see the previous episode notes by looking up the "author's note" tag on this blog. This is the last of the chapter notes, but there's one more post of the Afterword next! Stay tuned.
Ahh, the long awaited and momentous ending. To think that getting to the conclusion of this story was a mere pipe dream some years ago, something I truly did not know if I would ever be able to accomplish; even now I think I don't fully appreciate what a personal accomplishment I had achieved. I even had once imagined that the day I posted it completed would be something immense and life-changing, which of course it hadn't really been. Though, I was kinda underwhelmed at how little I felt about it at the time; while writing the last few chapters, I had been starting on an original novel project of mine, and had always planned to work on that one full out after I finished this fanfic story. So my feelings were more along the lines of "looks like this project is done…guess it's time to get going on the next one". Which I suppose wasn't all that bad, because I was excited to bring the new one to life while I was heartened by the finish of this project—but a few major setbacks and disappointments derailed the progress of that new project less than a year later.
It was to the point where I had difficulty even thinking about the new project for more than a year afterward. It was during that dejected period where I looked back at this project I had finished. The new project had been so thoroughly warped from what I wanted to do with it that I was disgusted with where it had gotten, I detested it that much. Yet at the same time, I realized that CotB was something I ultimately was deeply proud of, in a way I hadn't been for anything else I had written up to that point. All in all, what I had hoped for in completing this project had come to pass. It's not a perfect project, but it was satisfying for me, without reserve. And at a time where I was satisfied with nothing else in my life, that really spoke volumes.
And so, that brought me to this tome you have in your hands now. There's just something about being able to tangibly carry a symbol of your pride and joy in your hands wherever you go that felt immeasureably important—an undeniable physical existence of something otherwise intangible.
One note about the alternate flashback where Odin doesn't become the Raven is the intentional hint at the possibility that Odin might find a way to help the young soldier at some point later. This was a result of something that happened in a separate alternate scenario for an RP where Odin actually went on a journey to find a way to heal the young soldier's heart. Although there's no room to tell that tale here, I wanted to add a nod to that possibility and perhaps hint that it might have happened implicitly after the fact.
While overall this huge project came together piece by little piece, the general concept of this ending episode's plotline was a spark of inspiration that came in a flash. That the 'epic ending' would somehow consist of not only Caras returning after a seemingly inevitable death, but of Caras being a key player in taking down Drosselmeyer much more permanently, thereby saving both Kinkan and Ginkan, elegantly leading the two stories back together. Along with it was the idea that in order for him to do so, he had to do something that would have been unimaginable for him before—that he, of his own free will, would place himself at the mercy of a former enemy who absolutely despised him in order to gain the other's cooperation and trust. That likewise forced Fakir to do something he absolutely did not think he would ever do as well, and that was icing on the cake of an epic ending full of impact.
After thinking of it, I immediately knew it was how I wanted to end the story, and right afterward I e-mailed Mangaka-chan with my ideas. Oddly I grew more excited about it as I mulled it over, which I suppose might be because I was able to recognize the various ways in which it culminated a number of plotlines with narrative and emotional significance. Considering that I hadn't known how everything was going to end until the very last few episodes had been fleshed out, it coming together like it did was incredibly satisfying for me. In spirit, it really was what I had always wished for in writing this story, and it's not every day a dearest personal wish comes true.
I hadn't known at first how I was going to end the last chapter once the climactic battle was finished. Mangaka-chan's original suggestion was that it be a celebratory parade of some sort, mirroring the procession in the fic's first episode. I didn't immediately reject the idea, but my writer's instincts niggled at me for something else more meaningful.
When I recalled the back-to-daily-life scenes of many happy endings, I thought about how I wanted to show that, while it was back to daily life, it wasn't the same life it was before; it had become something more magical and full of greater promise. From that, I pondered how different things would be post-fanfic: Ahiru's identity as a duck being known and celebrated, the magic of the town acknowledged and taken in stride, and even the harmless yet irritating presence of a Drosselmeyer who lacked the power to hijack people's fates. And, I knew I wanted Caras and Rue to have a one-on-one talk about the past, one that couldn't properly happen until after the events of the fic. I realized that instead of a magnificent parade, scenes more modest and personal felt more satisfying to close the story with.
As the prelude story implies, the story continues beyond the pages of this book, and that's not necessarily a sad thing. Thereby it defies the oft stated truism about unfinished stories said in the canon series, that a story without an ending is a cruel fate.
I once heard that the endings of the two seasons could represent an accepted happy ending in the first, and then a defiant glorious hending in the second. Along those lines, I wonder what this apocryphal third season would represent? Perhaps neither. One way or the other, the first two acknowledge a fate imposed by the outside world; so, the third could show the third choice, where you neither fight it nor submit to it, but instead create your own fate entirely. Like Odin's desire to snatch the stars out of the sky and rearrange them to his liking, it's an extension of the idea from Princess Tutu itself that we don't need to follow the scripts written for us, no matter who wrote them—even if it is the heavy past of one's own self.
Part 12 of my series of extended author's notes of my Princess Tutu fanfic, Chapter of the Bird. You can see the previous episode notes by looking up the "author's note" tag on this blog.
It's easy to get why I was interested in referencing the classic novel "Heart of Darkness" after learning about it in high school literature. Even before I knew what the novel was about, I could see 'darkness' and 'heart' were pretty relevant words in of themselves. But after reading it in class, I realized its themes fit eerily well with the descent into humanity's darkness Odin himself went through, and thus the essence of this episode was established. I had hoped a title this cool-sounding would be an apt allusion for the semifinale of the fic, and I was not disappointed.
A side note, when I looked up the Japanese translated title of Heart of Darkness, the word 'heart' is not translated into 'kokoro' as an analogy for one's inner self, or even 'shinzo', which is the physiological heart, but 'mukou', which means 'deep within', like the core or center of a thing or place. It refers more to the darkness of the 'heart' of the jungle. However, it's definitely alluding to a metaphorical darkness by using 'yami' rather than 'ankoku', the former having a more metaphorical connotation and the latter referring more to a physical absence of light. The novel becomes most relevant to the episode when the title is read metaphorically.
The music theme, "Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age", is part of a music suite with each piece dedicated to a planet. The music itself is inspired not from the astronomical planets themselves, but their astrological traits. For example, Venus represents peace, and Jupiter represents jollity, as the suite's movement titles indicate. With astrology being an ancient method of telling one's fate 'through the stars', it fits the theme of the 'inexorable fate' that Caras seems locked in, even as we discover the irony that in his childhood, he aspired to literally rearrange those stars with his own hands. So even the entire suite itself fit the theme.
Saturn's piece in particular though holds the most emotional weight, and is the composer's favorite piece in his own Planets suite. Its quiet yet ominous drone, its grim intensity looming larger and larger, really evoked the emotions of the scene where Caras speaks of his heartfelt, resolute despair. Even the 'old age' part may be a pessimistic reference to the path of disillusionment, which the end of Caras's childhood might be thought of at its most extreme.
Yet just as weighty is the latter half of the piece, where after the harrowing climax comes a stark contrast of respite and contentment. Those emotions, too, evoke his transformed state of mind in the episode following.
A notable detail not initially intended was the momentary victory of the protagonists, when it seems that despite Caras's tireless efforts, his own quest had been in vain all along because of the struggle within own heart. While the story could have gone similarly if the sword had worked, the implications of its failure were too fascinating and gripping to leave as only hypothetical.
The idea came when Mangaka-chan and I were discussing how exactly Caras's heart could be shattered when canon was pretty clear about the limited methods of doing so. There were one of two possibilities. The obvious one was the strongly established power of the Prince's sword. But we also see that the sword can be summoned at his own will and no one else's, with only its destruction possible by another's hand. By this logic, the Prince could prevent that necessary last step simply by sending his sword away, never to return. This provided the level of desperation required to drive Caras to more extreme methods, like taking hostage and threatening the murder of his own self-proclaimed daughter.
I couldn't help but wonder, though—if he simply couldn't have the sword, was there really no other path left for him? Was there absolutely nothing else that could accomplish it? We considered Kraehe's statement that an ordinary blade may shatter a heart, but likely their life would go with it. It seemed a bit too convenient, though, to use any ordinary dagger he could summon on his own when he needed to go to such lengths for that one special sword.
I ended up thinking: if we compare hearts to nigh unbreakable gems like diamonds, and the only thing that can break a diamond is another diamond, then perhaps a heart shard could do the same to a heart? Maybe not rounded stones, but a stiletto shaped shard like Agony…?
This latter idea seemed at first incompatible with the rest of the plot outline, but I kept wondering if it could be integrated somehow. And then, it occurred to me: what if the sword didn't work? There were implications in canon that the sword needed strong will as well as physical effort to work properly. It would allow the Agony shard to be used instead as a Plan B (with the sword instead providing the impetus for the Agony shard to be dislodged in the first place), and also throw in a shocking moment for Caras demonstrating his obstinate inner turmoil he denies even to himself. It would drop him to a point of even deeper despair and unprecedented helplessness, breaking a critical point where Caras becomes so desperate that he sacrifices his own life without hesitation, that he might have even a small remaining chance to accomplish his goal. I feel it's even more effective in expressing the intensity of his emotions than if this brief pinnacle of desperation had not been shown.
It followed then that we end up having Caras split into two starkly different aspects of himself, and so if one gathered the rejected shards, they create the Caras heart fragment we see talking with Sagi. I always wanted to show that even at his best and most altruistic, Caras is still a raven on the inside, and so even this shard can take the form of a giant raven not unlike the monstrous version of him. It also makes for a baffling image of the Raven literally fighting with himself, an apt climactic metaphor for what has been going on within him the whole time.
On the Ginkan side, we see Komaro's furtive swordfighting abilities finally put in action, as well as hints that despite Komaro's tame and even dainty atmosphere, he downplays his considerable physical strength until he really needs to use it, as the guard notes that he "doesn't look like he could take on a soldier hand-to-hand". Unfortunately this is the extent to which we see this in action, but it's still well demonstrated that he uses it only when strictly necessary.
Part 11 of my series of extended author's notes of my Princess Tutu fanfic, Chapter of the Bird. You can see the previous episode notes by looking up the "author's note" tag on this blog.
Heh, Autor's lightbulb moment in this episode was exactly my reaction upon discovering the celestial origins of Nördlingen, and by proxy the mysterious Kinkan Town itself. It just tied together the town's mysteries so elegantly, and with the added sparkle of 'real life inspiration' to it, there was no question it had to be part of the fanfic, and I believe may have shaped how the later parts of the story developed. There's even a reference to Ginkan Town, as there is a second crater formed by a second meteorite in the area.
That wasn't the only lightbulb moment I had in creating this episode, though. The Firebird's climactic scene was the farthest along in the story I had in mind early on, even before I knew the ending or even what would happen in the last few episodes of the fic. So, the context of why Rue would have been kidnapped, or otherwise at Caras's mercy somehow, was determined much later when the rest of the story had been solidified further.
The inspiration for the whole scene sprung from my desire to portray Rue's development into the regal, self-assured young woman we see a glimpse of earlier in the series before Kraehe is revealed, and who I wish we could have seen her grow into more fully. With the one who cultivated that insecurity literally brought back to life, it was a prime opportunity for her to confront these fears in an emotionally climactic way.
What solidifed the imagery and mythological references was researching Norse mythology, discovering Brunhilde and her connection to figures already prominently referenced in the story, giving the references even more parallels and interconnections. She was both Siegfried's wife (or Sigurd's, depending on your literary source) and Odin's daughter, as well as a Valkyrie. It was a great contrast to her canonical parallel as the Odile to Siegfried in Swan Lake. The two Siegfrieds are from entirely different stories, but other parallels link them as well, such as how both swans and ravens alike are associated with Valkyries. With Odin also called 'the raven king', owning two ravens who act as his eyes to the world, connecting those dots is easy.
That mythology was combined with the lore of the Firebird. While phoenixes are distinct from swans and ravens in lore, Valkyries and ravens are both associated with death, and the themes of rebirth and rejuvenation go with the phoenix. In the legends, Brunhilde was imprisoned by her father in a ring of fire, which Siegfried rescued her from. To add to the fire imagery, the canon show has associated Rue, and not Kraehe, with the color red. Her ballet leotard is uniquely red among all the other students, and less obviously, her black hair has a red tint to it, even when transformed into Kraehe, while all raven feathers and her black Kraehe tutu have purple tints. I've interpreted that as a subtle hint Rue is in essence not one of the ravens, even if she otherwise resembles them. So I thought, maybe if her power became completely her own, that red color existing there all along would become boldly visible. The climax of The Firebird episode came together with that naturally, with her transformation into Brunhilde wearing a tutu design themed after the Firebird. Rather than denying her past as the raven's 'false' daughter, she takes that past she was given and 'dyes it red': made it her very own.
A brief aside about Komaro in the chapter's start, Komaro's brief recollection of his past was an abridged, simplified version of the more elaborate but no longer relevant backstory I had been cooking up for him since the first few chapters. In my mind he had always been a former squire, and thus had swordfighting abilities he has made great efforts to keep on the down-low, so as to avoid having to use them again. Originally I was formulating some setup where the knight he was asquired to was another original character entirely, and who he thought was dead but in fact had survived and was in hiding. With how Ginkan ended up going, though, the half formed plotline was no longer relevant, so instead I remembered the canonical dead knight from the show and the implication that he was from a town outside of Kinkan, and I thought it wasn't much of a stretch to surmise it could have been Ginkan, and that Komaro could have once been his squire.
Part 10 of my series of extended author's notes of my Princess Tutu fanfic, Chapter of the Bird. You can see the previous episode notes by looking up the "author's note" tag on this blog.
As much emotional emphasis I place on Oblivion, this is where readers first learn the origins of Caras's anguish, and therefore the Raven's. Because of that, I've gotten the impression from readers' reactions that it was this episode that fascinated them the most, in particular the Raven's backstory. Perhaps it's after this episode that readers actually know the horrors of what Caras had failed to escape, and so the tragedy of Oblivion's ending is better grasped in retrospect? Maybe it's a particularly effective metaphorical argument that his bad end is not only inevitable, but was hopeless from the very beginning? I guess I can only speculate.
The basic idea of the episode, of entering a cave where the protagonists face their worst fears, was thought of early on as a darker take on the Fear heart shard. I thought it was an interesting premise for the Tutu characters in general, providing new insight on them as people. But for Caras in particular, like with Oblivion, there is a thematically appropriate duality to the manifestation of his fears: one is the greatest fear of the Raven in this fanfic that we are already familiar with, which is his complete transformation into a human, on the inside as well as out. But simultaneously it clashes with the fear belonging to the one the Raven calls 'the human inside of him', using the same phrasing Mytho used during his battle with the Raven's blood. Those two manifestations, each representing the other's worst fears, fight verbally with one another, and it is seemingly settled after Caras's recollections of his past.
The episode prelude message says, if you are your worst enemy, then you can never get away from them, because you can never escape from yourself. Thinking of these implications, it becomes clearer as to the meaning of a heart's "prison".
In early brainstorming, Komaro was present in the Cave of Terrors episode, and so I was even formulating the vision he would see within it. I had imagined his would revolve around fear of harming others, brought to a saddening extreme when it shows him a vision of his personal credo of 'an orderly, disciplined world' resulting in a totalitarian dystopia where the rules only cause suffering and serve to enslave people rather than help them. To him, this would be his greatest nightmare, a warping of his core values so repulsive that the vision would shake him deeply. But since the story ended up placing him in an entirely different area, the ideas didn't end up coming into play, and so they remain as simply part of an author's theoretical headcanon.
Part 9 of my series of extended author's notes of my Princess Tutu fanfic, Chapter of the Bird. You can see the previous episode notes by looking up the "author's note" tag on this blog.
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Notes for 35.akt: "Oblivion"--
The course of the episode's final scene broke down every way out that Caras could have taken, showing that no matter how much outstanding strength and lucidity he can display, his past returned to haunt him. He does not break down easily; every step of the way, he fights back, and shows himself to be uncommonly mindful and determined to defy the descent that nonetheless occurs at the end. Moreso than any other episode in this story, I wrote this chapter to make the reader feel the most like there is no way the story will end happily for Caras, that by the mere fact of being the villain, he is doomed to live in anguish, or be freed from it in death. Oblivion was titled as such for its connotation of "to forget completely". Who had forgotten, and what was forgotten, however, is ambiguous. Is it the Raven himself, who forgot that he was ever the Raven in the first place? Or is it, in the end, Caras who forgets what it was like to think of himself as someone other than the Raven? Intentionally it is well applicable to both.
This was, in a sense, the inevitable conclusion to Caras's amnesia arc. It's also the beginning of the second half of the Ginkan arc, where after Mytho leaves only involves original characters. As a guideline I tried to have at least one canon character as a major player in any plotline, but after discussing where Komaro would be most effective in the story with Mangaka-chan, it turned out that he ended up returning to Ginkan, as well as staying there afterward, as it turned out he had much more to contribute to the plotline in Ginkan. This means he gets left out of the Cave of Terrors scenes when I had at first imagined him being in them, but that was not as important as the scenes Komaro enables by his presence in Ginkan. The insignia was Mangaka-chan's idea as a tangible symbol for Trutho to remember himself with, and it made most sense to introduce the item in this chapter when they exchange towns.
The music theme for this episode is also intentionally the saddest, most despairing piece of the whole soundtrack (in my view), and not only was the fact that it was Tchaikovsky's last work before his death significant, but the very fact that it is the same Tchaikovsky who composed such iconic works so integral to the canon show as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. Those ballet works are so much more well known than the Pathetique symphony, and like the untold backstory of the Raven in canon, the former works belie the depth of despair in the latter. Though I wonder even now, how much are readers convinced by this chapter? How sure are they here that this story will, or won't, end truly happily? Or does their uncertainty overwhelm anticipation of any ends?
Part 8 of my series of extended author's notes of my Princess Tutu fanfic, Chapter of the Bird. You can see the previous episode notes by looking up the "author's note" tag on this blog.
Caras's foundational idea as the "reincarnation of the Raven" had another interpretation I thought of but hadn't ended up going with: an entirely different person who harbors the soul of such a terrifying being, a direct parallel to Fakir's relation with the ill-fated Knight, but with even darker implications than Fakir's. That sort of character's burden would have revolved around the angst and guilt regarding the sins of a previous life, and the constant fear they would one day perpetuate them. Like with Caras's initial young boy image, I once entertained the thought I could integrate it into this story as well, though I didn't think it possible.
Yet one day I realized: without the Raven's original physical form, what kept Caras so tethered to his identity was the vivid memories of that life. If he hadn't remembered, would he have realized he had been the Raven? Would he even believe it if he was told so? Such a what-if scenario led to the story's amnesia arc showing just how different Caras behaves if those memories are taken away. And when I thought of what Caras with the Raven's memories would think of amnesiac Caras, of being the same person… I realized just how much the experience, however short-lived, would shake him.
When I had first thought of this plot twist, it wasn't going to last for as long as it does in this story. It would have barely lasted an episode or less. This is one place where Mangaka-chan became particularly influential as an editor, as she thought that such an incident really ought to last longer, and that by spending more time with him in this state, I could characterize him much more strongly. This would require its own entire episode, which would happen between the climactic battle in Faust and the return of memories in Oblivion.
At this point, I had preliminary titles for all the chapters I was intending to write (though the contents of the later ones were still vague). If I was going to add a whole new episode, I had to think about its title and music theme, as the latter would surely influence the chapter itself in turn, and I was stumped at first.
I forget if Mangaka-chan said anything in particular to trigger this, but I finally realized that the whole circumstance with Sagi personally talking with Caras, who was a former monster of sorts, and her seeing a whole new side of him, had a lot in common with the themes of Beauty and the Beast. You could even directly corrrelate the two of them to the titular characters. As Beauty and the Beast had not been overtly referenced in the canon show despite its folktale origins, I knew what I had to name the episode. Considering Mangaka-chan sparked the existence of that entire episode, it's very fitting that one fanart she drew for the fanfic was an analogous Region 2 DVD cover illustration for this arc. As she might remember seeing once, I had that fanart as my dedicated cellphone wallpaper for quite some time, and still have it circulating as one of my lock screen images. (What can I say? It makes me happy to look at it.)
As for its music theme, I had the Peer Gynt suite in my pool of possible musical references already, but it wasn't until I looked into the part in its story about the Mountain King that I attached it to this chapter. It, too, mentioned a "monster" of sorts, specifically a king of a band of trolls living in a mountain, and the clincher of that segment was when the troll king posed a question to the main character: what made someone a monster or a man? I thought the two tales matched each other surprisngly well, and indeed in that episode's introduction tale, they are meshed together.
It became clear by then just how influential Sagi would be to Caras's story, and he to hers. To think that back when I wrote their first meeting, it was simply an interesting aside, part of a series of interactions showing other aspects of the two of them—I wouldn't have guessed. Even when the amnesia arc was first brainstormed, Mangaka-chan's first idea was that in this state, he would mainly interact with Emma, far from where Sagi would be at the time. My writerly instincts, however, said that keeping him in the same place as the other main characters would have much more impact, and when I worked under this assumption, I soon realized that Sagi would be the most effective player to drive this arc, particularly when I took into account the Agony shard. The development of their characters and their relationship really took off after this.
Oh and if you'd like to see the art @mangakachan drew that this is talking about, here's a link to her deviantArt gallery page for it:
doubly funny that I saw a compilation of all the corporate accounts like "aw thanks elmo, we're doing well" meanwhile all the flesh and blood real human people are extremely not okay
Part 7 of my series of extended author's notes of my Princess Tutu fanfic, Chapter of the Bird. You can see the previous episode notes by looking up the "author's note" tag on this blog.
Notes for 33.akt: "Faust"--
This episode was one of the first few scenes I had already envisioned even when much of the fic was not yet formulated. The mental image of Caras and Mytho duking it out in this eerily parallel fight was clear even when the direction and ending of the fic were not yet determined. The circumstances in which it would happen were something I only figured out later as well.
The Faust reference ended up being more nebulous than I thought it would. I originally thought it would directly refer to Caras, what with its "deal with the devil" theme, but as Caras's backstory became clearer to me, it wasn't quite like that. The reference from Faust that held true is something a little less well known: while Faust gained power that would ultimately cause him to be swallowed by darkness, the ending of the story differs depending on what version you look at.
In the first versions, the story ends with Faust being dragged down to Hell, thus earning its title as a classic tragedy. But in later versions, just before Faust is to be dragged to Hell, God interferes, and says that while Faust may have greatly sinned and willingly traded away his soul, his unrelenting striving for greater knowledge that drove him to do so was worth redeeming him for. As this fic, in a way, revises the end of the Raven in a similar way, ultimately Faust really is a fitting reference for this fic.
Admittedly, since the strongest parallel also spoils the end of the fic somewhat, I didn't spell that out in the episode prelude. Instead, I sidestepped it by comparing Faust with Drosselmeyer. There are parallels between Drosselmeyer and the Raven I've hypothesized, under the idea that you can see important elements of an author in each of the characters they create. They both have a deeply negative view of people, and would love nothing more than to see the world drown in darkness. However, their contexts and approaches to it are very different, and perhaps some of what keeps the Raven locked in his cruel viewpoint is Drosselmeyer's own misanthropic worldview. Yet, as even the fic attests, characters are not their author, and can break away from them if given enough impetus.
