darlingdeathbird
27 March 2012 @ 03:03 pm
Ohh, it's funny how I can be stupid for a really long time and then realize something pretty basic. I know part of why I have a procrastination problem: I think that when I finally confront of the object that has caused my procrastinating that I will have to tackle it like a wild tiger, then kill it, then roast it over an open fire, chop it up most reasonably, and serve it to my starving imaginary family. Sans the metaphor, I make things feel bigger than they are, and I don't consider that I can have at them in more than one swipe.

A homework reading assignment that's 50pgs... sure - annoying. But 15-20pgs each day of a weekend is very unobtrusive. I've known this sometimes and forgotten it other days. Similarly, but more pathetically, I usually always forget that plotting for a story can go the same way. I can still feel the anguish that I experienced when my schedule "wasn't permitting me" to sit down and plan He's There, thus keeping me from writing it! I've gotta stop seeing this stuff as epic planning sessions and just pick at it. No pressure. It should be fun.

I learned (re-learned? Temporarily remembered?) the lesson thinking about some advice I got in a speech class about two years ago. If you want to present a good speech, nothing can be last minute about it and no part of the preparation can be powered through. Rather than tackling a tiger, it's more like training a... far less dangerous animal. My professor, Mrs. Corona, said that as soon as a speech was assigned, the best way to go about it was to never let a day pass where you hadn't looked over your notes, added to them, and read them aloud. Also, accept that you'll spend a few days working on it without liking how it is yet.

I'm glad I've thought about this while planning Nosferatu in Love!

It's a brand-spankin'-new story, I haven't had to plot in a while and the format here is different than a novel or even the Crystal Palace series, which has installments but they're not wrapped up with bows. But I have "secrets" to success. If you have your own secrets, then ignore me acting like I'm some kind of Writer's Block doctor. :D

1.) Look at the notes every day.
2.) Have a time (or at least a deadline time) when you're supposed to look at them. I pick 4-5pm because I like the lighting in my room at sunset and usually I'm in the mood for tea.**
3.) Work at it for ~2 hours. Time limits vary per person.
4.) Listen to music! I always develop a soundtrack for things I write. Even some of my AIW fanfictions have songs. I see if a lyric gives me an idea or the like.**
5.) Put it down when you feel like you've spent yourself or are getting distracted, because conditioning is a powerful thing. If seeing the document or papers again makes you remember staring at them when you didn't want to anymore, it won't be encouraging. Seeing them should make you excited.

**As always, tea is my helper when I write anything, as is music. :) Find helpers. The reason things like this help is because it's sensual - it appeals to the senses. It conditions your body into remembering and thinking about the story when it tastes/smells/sees/hears something. The effect does more than make you think of the story - it gives it a presence outside of your mind (even if it is in your mind, technically.)

Example - He's There is brought to you by nights at the park near my old house, pomegranate tea, peach green tea, My Brightest Diamond, and my tropical rain forest candle that I've had to replace thrice in the past five years.

I don't know if this is common, but I get inspired to write anything by the smell of fresh air. It's cold out so I can't do it for long, but I open a window, let the crispness come in, and hear the "sound" of outside. I've been inspired for Nosferatu in Love by an unexpected thing the past couple months - a dead tree right next to my window. lol I wondered if I could go on to my balcony and bring the living room coffee table out there to sit at, but, as I said, it's cold. It would actually be so awesome if I could at least put the padding in my coat that I require for Orlok's hunch (it's comfy) and go for a night-walk. But I'm in a new city where I don't know where to walk and I worry about my safety... God, I miss home.

Anyway...

The beach is in walking distance of Ellen and Hutter's home in my series and (presumably) in the original movie Nosferatu, as they live in a coastal town and Ellen very casually goes there by herself. I strongly connect Orlok with ships since he hijacks one on his way to her and I've read that his coat is apparently a mixture of a seaman's and a 19th century German nobleman's (this could be wrong, however. I don't know shit about costumes.) The sea is described in academic texts about Nosferatu as a place where the mind can try to stretch, but it cannot cross.

A certain self-reflexive edge characterizes Friedrich's canvases of unfathomable expanses, in which landscape becomes a meditation on vision itself, and Murnau's use of landscape as an analogy for the desiring self. Heinrich von Kleist's observations on Friedrich's Monk by the Sea (1809-1910; fig. 43) are particularly applicable to the mood hovering over Ellen as she waits on the beach for Hutter's return -- a situation charged with erotic ambiguity since it is Nosferatu who travels by ship, while her husband moves across the land. Appropriately, Kleist reports his response to friedrich's canvas in subjective terms: "that one has wandered out there, that one must return, that one wants to cross over, that one cannot, that one lacks here all life and yet perceives the voices of life in the rushing tide, in the blowing wind, in the passage of clouds, in the solitary birds." Like the nameless subject of Kleist's commentary, Ellen, too, wants to reach out for something infinite, supernatural, and eternal, although her sitting by the sea recalls a situation of confinement comparable to the one she experiences as she looks at the world through a window, day after day.

-- Angela Dalle Vacche in Cinema and Painting



That's why I drew her on the beach. I think she'll go there a lot, and she's more of a main character than I expected!

I've been watching or listening to this while I plan, because of that. (Beaches inspire the shit out of me, too. How convenient...)



I was thinking of something like this in time-lapse or fast-motion (to clearly catch the fact that it's a sunrise) for the final credits of the last episode to a song called "Perpetual State". I don't know and can't find the artist. Anyone curious can find it on this playlist: http://unknowncolorx.livejournal.com/939.html. I'll go over the playlist another day. :)

So long!
♥,
J
 
 
Current Mood: thoughtful
 
 
darlingdeathbird
02 March 2012 @ 06:44 pm
First post for this series! First post! So excited, although I expect nobody to read it.

This is just the general information I came up with. I thought I should post it in small doses so if anybody does want to follow me, they don't feel overwhelmed by huge posts.

So here are the characters and relationships. :)

NOSFERATU IN LOVE

The Setting & Time
The time is modern day. Characters will be translated from their 1830's identities, except Orlok. The setting is yet to be worked out, but whatever the case, there will not be an emphasis on a specific location. It is a normal city and suburb, and Hutter and Ellen live in an upper-middle class neighborhood, although their house is modest compared to some. Across the street from them is a house which hasn't been sold in a long time because of ghost rumors. It's similar in style to the Salzspeicher. This is where Orlok moves.


Character – Count Orlok
He is the Nosferatu. He has come to the city to drink blood to his heart's content, and has nothing in his “home” besides a coffin with dirt in it. The things he likes most in the world are blood and women. He will eat anyone if he's hungry, but he tends to spend extra time creeping women out by following them or watching them through windows. He sometimes tries to think of new ways to get them to spend more time with him, specifically Ellen. However, it's important to know that he isn't ultra-dedicated because he hasn't the braincells to care about anything as much as he does his sustenance. When he's at his house, he mostly stares at Ellen and Hutter's house, especially at Ellen's bedroom window. Eventually he buys a dining table and some armchairs. He can sit perfectly still for hours like a spider on the wall. He waits for Ellen to come home from work. Aside to that, there's someone close to being upstairs, but they're not quite there. Orlok seems to have some interest in mirroring the humans, but he misunderstands nearly everything there is to know.


Character – Ellen Hutter
Although Ellen is not a cuckoo's egg, she feels like one because she's around too many “normies”. She lacks her husband's charisma and people often ask her to repeat things. She's never been able to make good friends with another woman, and both her parents died only a few years ago, so she can be rather clingy to Hutter (if he deserves it.) She has a darker fashion sense than her peers and gets mistaken for Goth all of the time, or a witch. Her job is (I don't know yet), but it is nothing meaningful to her. In her free time, she's part of a book club and she likes to create with fabric (clothes, blankets, bags.) She's a bit cloudy on the outside; people don't always know if they've pissed her off, or if she's happy with them. Ellen can be quite passive and non-confrontational. Orlok brings out a side of her that is extremely different than usual because she must hit him over the head with honesty if she wants to preserve herself. It turns out that sometimes she wants to rip her hair out, or someone else's.


Character – Jonathan Hutter
Hutter's that guy you knew in high school, who was kind of an idiot, but he was always so nice to you so you never had the heart to call him a popular asshole. Things just seem to go swimmingly for him. Although his wife has a number of rainy days, he seems to have hit a groundswell of good luck. His parents paid him through college, he makes decent money, and he doesn't ever get cavities, even though his diet is as bad as a college frat boy's. His hobbies include TV and camping, both of which Ellen hates, but he can also make fun out of nothing and sometimes comes up with weird ways to entertain her, like building forts with the couch cushions or proposing a water-gun fight. He wishes Ellen would cook dinner every night because it's “so good”, but most of the time he improvises with cereals, waffles, and Hungry Mans. Despite his flaws at home, he tries to be professional at his career. He likes to bring paperwork into bed when Ellen isn't in the mood, and his phone always rings at the wrong moment. Every few minutes, he promises he'll be back in a few minutes, but he really is guilty when he has to ignore Ellen. He likes to pretend he's the whole package, but he knows deep down that he would run away from a fight and would prefer if his hair stayed fluffed.


Hutter and Ellen's Relationship
This couple is struggling a little. They were friends as adolescents, then they fell in love and got married. Although they care deeply for each other, they don't have a lot in common and are more of a story of opposites attracting. Both have different circles of friends/lifestyles and different interests. While Hutter is very positive and forward thinking about all of this, Ellen can't help but realize that no matter what happens she feels alienated and awkward whenever they make a compromise on how to spend an evening, and she can only imagine that deep down Hutter feels the same in the opposite situation, try as he may to pretend otherwise. That said, Ellen is attracted to his sweetness and the very behavior that can also get on her nerves – his vigor and sometimes rashness. It can either make or break an evening; either create a spontaneous romantic experience between the two, or make Ellen walk out of the room in frustration. When they're having an issue, Ellen tends to sink into herself, take bubble baths, write poetry, or go on walks. Hutter would prefer it if Ellen were a little more straight-forward about what it is she wants out of him, but Ellen feels he should have better intuition if he's really her soul-mate. He doesn't seem to ever “get” her even though they work on “communication”. Ellen sometimes treats Hutter like she's his mom, wondering if he's thought about if a situation is safe or reasonable. He likes being waited on and taken care of, but sometimes he wishes she thought he was a little smarter.


Ellen and Count Orlok's Relationship
...Is not one that they see eye-to-eye on, and neither can be negotiated out of their position. Orlok does not really care that women don't want him – he has an elementary understanding of the mind, but focuses on his ability to control the physical world, so if he can bring a woman to him, he feels he's succeeded. Orlok isn't always near Ellen, but he invades her dreams and makes proposals to her in her sleep. She is in a constant state of unrest because of him, sometimes preferring to stay up late instead of surrender to the contaminated subconscious that awaits her. She does not have any interest in vampires and thinks Orlok needs to be killed, she just spends much of the series unaware of how that could be done. Despite that she adamantly feels this and does not try to hide it at all, Orlok likes to have her company and is a tiny bit amused by her torture. All of their interactions are initiated by him, who first wants simply to stare at her before killing her but is then convinced that he is in love and that Ellen will be coaxed to submission. Because she's building up a tolerance, his attempts to incite dark emotions in her (particularly lust) don't work nearly to their worst degree. Unfortunately, he does waver her a little and she has to deal with the horribly peculiar force that surrounds him. But, mostly, Orlok wants to exercise on her his very bizarre “shadow sexuality” (what is left being that he is undead and now a monster), until – she fears, and he does not deny is possible – he gets bored and kills her for that oh-so-delicious blood.


Hutter and Count Orlok's Relationship
Hutter thinks maybe if he ignores the vampire that he will go away. He knows he sold him the house across the street, and they feel his presence whenever he's in the neighborhood, but Orlok very sneakily spends time with Hutter's wife, so he doesn't know at first that he's harassing her. The thing is, Hutter is kind of a wimp. He is not particularly willing to confront Orlok and instead tries to use Ellen as a mediator. All of his interactions with Orlok end in Hutter being very uncomfortable. He doesn't think Orlok has good manners, good taste, good thoughts, good anything, but eventually, despite the fact that he and Ellen talk openly about this horrible creature living nearby, Orlok's control over Ellen to some degree makes Hutter question her faithfulness because he does not understand she is his victim. When Orlok learns he's creating a rift between them, he starts to find more ways to make Hutter feel inadequate. He isn't really capable of respect, so he basically just ignores him in the meantime, despite the fact that they have met and he has almost fed on him before. That memory gives Hutter the shivers. Orlok seriously considers killing him during the series, but Ellen keeps making negotiations. In the end, she runs out of ideas.


Next, I want to draw their profile pictures! (Even if Count Orlok looks the same.)


J
 
 
Current Mood: tired
 
 
darlingdeathbird
31 July 2011 @ 10:33 pm
Oy! This is hard work! Actually, it's not really hard, there's just a lot of it.

Stage One (100% Complete)
I can't let you read it, but it's long. @-@
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Stage Two (50%)
Yes, I have a big felt heart as a bookmark. :)
Image and video hosting by TinyPic Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Stage Three (0%)
But I can go ahead and start it soon once I plug in some of my notes from the book.

I'm starting to feel kind of bad that this wasn't being done in June. :/
 
 
Current Mood: sore
 
 
darlingdeathbird
24 October 2010 @ 05:28 pm
Oghhhhhh~ *cry* So yesterday was my deadline on working on the AIW site. I was able to do a rough draft of the about/production/history page and the welcome/chuckleheads/dvd/updates page, but for the past few days it's been the characters page only. I always knew it was going to be a big feat!

All of the bios are done, except the Tweedles have really short descriptions, and I couldn't find quotes for everyone from the top of my head. With Alice, I couldn't even think of where to find one because of how boring she is. lol

I caved, about the pictures, though. I didn't want to give myself the trouble of drawing and coloring them all when life-action photos would do but the urge just came and I wanted the graphics to be consistent, so...

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{Click to Enlarge}


Obviously I'm missing like 6 characters, and they are not colored yet! I told myself during November it would be okay to work on them here and there when there's time.

Here are the other drawings, for around the site. :3

Photobucket Photobucket

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So~~ That's what I got done this month! Plus a few colored buttons. Oh! And an interview with that adorable bunny above this sentence.

I actually have a lot of old pages from the site that I was working on a while ago, like for the episodes, links, and merchandise pages, so there isn't a terrible amount of stuff to do more besides lots of wonderful art. ♥ It'll have to be a December thing.

On that note, I've got to start on planning He's There now! Just kind of waiting for the right day to come... Tonight's homework, tomorrow I'll be pooped from school, so Tuesday sounds good.

I just want to make sure when I start planning that I have an open mind and I can think of the story from the perspective of someone reading it (or watching it? :D). Also, I need to rummage for things that need tying up and see if I can tie them together in an interesting way.

The next 10 chapters... all I can really say without spoilers is -- the ability to be as he has been will be exhausted. She will learn how much it utterly sucks to be stalked once she has fallen in love with him. Like a rollercoaster - up, up, up... she can see the whole world!--DOWN.

Oh, excited...

But kind of uncertain, too. Those days, where you could play with this idea; entertain the characters; build it up, are gone. We have to face the consequences of our actions.

Eep!

Well, I've got plenty of reason to be inspired to work on this, since I will be the totally hawt Robert Phantom for Halloween this year. lmao We're going thrift-shopping for my hat some time soon.



And as for CP3 and the AIW one-shot, they may still happen. Kate's been flaky on me this whole month, but you can't be a hopeless writer. I would love to do that Halloween story, though. :)
 
 
Current Mood: accomplished
 
 
darlingdeathbird
09 November 2009 @ 04:38 pm
I DID ITTTTT!! THE PLANNING IS DONE FOR NOW!!!

Wow, my ass is numb from sitting on the bathroom rug for so long. In the dark, with candles, and the laptop. I know I sound real stupid considering all I did was plan, and only like... the next third, not even the whole rest of the story. But it's what I needed; I have enough detailed plot to hold me over for at least 5 chapters and stuff beyond that that'll just need fleshing-out spur-of-the-moment events and details. I do like not having every single detail planned ahead of time, and I wrote nearly everything before this with almost no written-down planning.

But I can't help it! I'm thrilled! The stuff I have planned is even good. If I didn't have to do so much text-book reading for tomorrow, I'd start writing it right away. My goal is to have Chapter 25 ready for Sunday, though. The way I feel right now makes me think I'll finish it and keep going, to make up for lost time!

FF.net, I have not failed you! (And I love my 40 fans!) Wait, wait, Raye too! 41.
(I miss you, Raye. ♥)
 
 
Current Mood: satisfied