One of the weird/borderline-crazy things about creating your own stories is that you make up little personal details about your fictional characters. Like birthdays. And December 29 just so happens to be Rory's. So in honor of that, plus the fact that 2010 is drawing to a close, this post is going to be entirely dedicated to my personal progress report about my pet project of four years and counting. Therefore, if you have abhor my self-indulgent posts about my pet project or you have no clue what in the world I'm talking about, stop reading HERE.
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Now, moving on.
So, last year I made the laughable -- no, make it ROFLMAO-able -- New Year's Resolution of finishing the first complete draft of EP by the end of 2010. Hey, dream big and all that jazz, right? Needless to say, that CLEARLY did not happen.
So what did I actually manage to accomplish? Well, some things I changed:
STRUCTURE COUP: essentially, I completely overthrew the original narrative structure that alternated the chapters between Charlotte and Rory. A couple of past reviewers complained that the structure made the flow extremely choppy. The story is now divided into three "acts" -- Charlotte's POV makes up the entire first act; Charlotte still dominates the second act but vignettes from Rory's POV start to appear; by the third act, Rory's POV dominates until the climax scene for Charlotte's storyline, and then Charlotte takes over for the conclusion.
FALL OF THE QUEEN: this was a fairly recent decision I made, so I may actually change my mind about this -- I threw out all except one of the beginning chapters about Rory and will instead narrate from her POV only for the events that occur after she reaches the peak of her fame at Ecstasia. The back-story about Rory's entry into Her Highness and her rise to power will be instead revealed through Charlotte's journalism interviews with Rhys, Patrick, and Leo. (The decision actually makes me quite sad, because that meant essentially discarding nearly half of the chapters I had already written.)
AKA THE NEW GIRLS: both Rory and Charlotte's back stories are clarified. The Maciels move to Rosecrans at the beginning of Rory's sophomore year for reasons revealed later; Charlotte is now also technically a "new girl" in the sense that she dropped out of a private arts academy due to burn-out and then enrolled at Rosecrans High.
BYE BYE SKYE: I originally wanted to use her as a foil for Rory -- but then decided this girl made things way too high-school-drama-ish and that she was completely unnecessary.
MINOR STUFF: Rory is now Brazilian/Taiwanese instead of Portuguese/Japanese; Patrick is of some sort of Hispanic/Spanish descent (Santoro instead of Elleston); Rhys is no longer the stereotypical flirting playboy but someone much less cliched; greater emphasis and repetition of thematic motifs (Orpheus and Eurydice; Brahms and Clara; self-fantasy vs. obligation; etc.)
And I'd rather not say just exactly how far along I am with the drafting process -- it's quite embarrassing.
I promise -- a more interesting post within the next two or three days.
Really, she thought, glancing at the magazine rack by the check-out line with a bottle of organic, non-fat, hormone-free milk and a bag of baby carrots she had managed to convince herself she would snack on instead of the leftover quarter of apple pie waiting on her kitchen countertop. I’m following two diets at a time.
At the peak of the pyramid of beauty were those glossed magazines, with Cover Girl puckering her ruby candy-coated lips, her skin unblemished and creamlike with a tint of strawberry in the cheeks, and the cloud of headlines like mindless speech bubbles chattering of “Score a Slammin’ Bod in 60 Days” and “25 Naked Truths About Guys’ Bodies” around Cover Girl’s head. Strata underneath were the scattered assortment of cosmetics, clothes, accessories, hair salon appointments, pedicures, manicures, and spa treatments. But at the base of the pyramid was the staple of which she had been bred and fed ever since she had been but a pigtailed toddler, peering into tulips in search of Thumbelina and her fairy prince. She knew the fairy tales by heart. The prince would enter on his white horse, riding in on the wingtips of such words as Fate and Destiny declaring eternal youth, eternal beauty, eternal love. How would the princess know her prince had come? Snow White never questioned whether the prince who had kissed her deathly lips was the One. Sleeping Beauty never questioned whether the prince who had slashed through the thorn hedges and slain the dragon was the One. Swept away on the white horse into the distant sunset implicit of a happily-ever-after – they just knew.
She knew it too then, that moment when she looked up and set eyes on him for the first time. It was something more than the way he carried himself like Michelangelo’s David, eyes agaze with a look of expectant confidence, set into a face chiseled from the finest marble framed by dark Grecian curls. It was more than the way she felt as if he had struck her in the chest with a crushing stone that left her gasping like a leaping fish.
She knew it then, that summer night when she waited for his shift to end and he took her to the ice cream parlor downtown where she ate all the toppings from his sundae and he ate her unfinished ice cream (she had suddenly become self-conscious of the calories) before leaning across the table to lick the sugar from her lips. She knew it then, the time they wore matching leather jackets to the opening night of Spring Awakening at the performing arts center and he held her hand through the show as she pretended not to cry and he pretended not to notice the wet patches where her face had been pressed against his sleeve. She knew it then, the first time he cooked for her at his apartment and he served her lemon-herb salmon filets and rosemary potatoes with red wine and poached pears (taking her diet all into account) and afterwards she reluctantly agreed to watch the horror films he loved so much and spent the rest of the evening with her eyes shut clutching his arm in fright. (She soon had the sneaking suspicion that his love for horror had more to do with her frightened antics than the blood and gore on the television screen). She knew it then, that same night when she couldn’t sleep with all the images of dismembered body parts rattling in her head and how he cradled her in his arms on the couch until they were both lulled to sleep by the rhythmic way their breaths drew in and out in unison like the tide.
She knew.
She knew it then, as they lay under the stars inventing their own constellations and he pointed into the sky and said, There’s you and me – like Cepheus and Cassiopeia, like Perseus and Andromeda, like Fate and Eternity. She knew it then, when before his two-week trip he bought her an enormous teddy bear spritzed with his favorite cologne and how she would breathe in the scent of him late at night, shivering with the craving emptiness of an addict in withdrawal. She knew it then, when he blindfolded her on her birthday and all she could feel was his hand leading hers, and when he finally undid her blindfold she saw him kneeling before her on one knee. She knew it then, the moment her three-letter answer left her lips and transformed his face into a Cheshire smile of bliss as he lifted her into the air towards the sunset and let her feel as if she could fly forever.
No.
She thought she knew.
She knew it then, when the years passed and the layers of the pyramid began to crumble to ruins. She knew it then, when the hairdresser began recommending dyes to conceal her graying roots. She knew it then, when the lines began to settle into her face and neck, eroding from etches to crevasses in her aging skin. She knew it then, when she stood next to him in front of the bathroom mirror and saw the same, proud, timeless, statuesque face she had first seen on him so many years ago, looking decades younger than her graying visage.
She knew it then, when they sat together on the couch watching another film without roaring gun fights or blood-spurting murders (lest they trigger palpitations in her heart) and she fell asleep beside him long before the movie ended and the credits began to roll. She knew it then, when she no longer wore her leather jacket (because nobody at her age wore leather with the exception of clogs and handbags) when he took her to the performing arts center and she heard whispers of “cougar” and “cradle robber” behind her back and she pretended not to crumple like a tissue as the lights began to dim. She knew it then, when she was bedridden after surgery and he spoon-fed her strawberry ice cream with each bite powdered with all of her favorite toppings as if she were the child among them.
She knew it then, as she lay awake beside his sleeping form, wondering if he dreamt of that cute, twenty-something waitress who had commented how gentlemanlike it was of him to take his mother out for dinner, or that pretty saleswoman whose eye had lingered on him seconds longer than what would be deemed professionally appropriate.
She knew it then, when the pent-up misery inevitably unleashed itself, clawing at his timeless skin and pounding at his immortal bones. She said nothing when he packed his bags wordlessly and left, to wander for another eternity.
She knew it then, when she could no longer look upon his ageless beauty without reminder of what she had once been.
-------------------------- Merry Christmas, everyone. Yes, a little depressing -- but that's my style.
So frustrated by school. Especially how I was right at the border between an A- and a B+ for two classes, and it went against my favor both times.
Overall, my grades were better this semester than in the past. But FML. It pisses me off like none other.
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I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's times like this when I start fantasizing about writing a bestseller novel with a craze equivalent to the Twilight series, so I don't have to feel like my future is dictated by a bunch of letter grades.
I already knew what kind of reaction I was going to get when I returned home -- generally speaking, anyways. My hair had been short and bobbed for nearly five years that many people couldn't remember the last time -- or any time -- that they had seen me with hair long enough to be swept up in a ponytail.
What I didn't expect was when I showed up to my neighbors' dinner party the night I landed in California and was showered in a flurry of compliments from the other mothers there about how beautiful and ladylike I had become, and how I look better with longer hair and should not cut my hair short again anytime soon.
I never know what to think in these situations, because the main thought zipping through my head is, "Was I really ugly back then?"
In the car yesterday, my mother told me that when she visited her in-laws in Taipei over Thanksgiving Break, my grandmother told her that I had completely changed and looked so pretty when I visited Taipei two summers ago. My mom said she laughed and joked, "Are you saying that she was an ugly child?"
I probably was. That is to say, I'd never had any illusion that I was beautiful. Before I got braces, my lower teeth were a crooked mess, while my upper incisors were noticeably larger than the rest of the teeth in the row. I don't have double-eyelids -- considered more beautiful than single-eyelids in Asian cultures. I refused to let my hair down as a kid, always preferring to tie it up and out of the way for when I played sports. As a result of all the soccer and tennis I played in my youth, I have been tanned as long as I can remember and have never had the snowy white skin of a classically beautiful Asian girl.
As far as that's gone, I still haven't changed much. My teeth are straight now, but my single-eyelids remain. Perhaps I might be less tan than before, now that I play much less outdoors than I did in the past, but undoubtedly my skin tone will still garner awkward remarks if I make another trip to Taiwan. And as I was still sporting a bob when I visited my grandparents two summers ago, hair likely has nothing to do with it.
Penelope Cruz once said, "I don’t think I am beautiful. I can look good and I can look ugly." The first time I heard that quote, I thought -- "Pshhh, easy for you to say." But at where I am now in life, Penelope Cruz couldn't have said it better.
I've already had two dreams about going home, and it's the only the third day of finals week. In the first dream, I went home and discovered that my family had bought a new puppy. I played with it for awhile, then glanced at the carry-bag and asked where Matisse was. My mother responded that Matisse had fallen ill, collapsed, and died. It's not the first time I've had this dream, and once again I woke up crying. In the second dream, I went home to discover that my family had gotten incredibly thin and were starving themselves to pay for my college tuition. Soon, I was seriously considering applying to transfer to one of the UCs.
I turned in my first paper yesterday, and crunch time begins tomorrow -- I have exams on Thursday and Friday and a ten-page paper due Saturday that I haven't started. I can't wait to go home.
* Editor’s Note: Below is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Select phrases and words have been revised to be more accessible for young and hip modern audiences.
He was not Mr. Wentworth, the young schoolteacher who had returned to teach at Monkford High School after being unable to find a job in the workplace with his art history degree, but his brother, the Captain Wentworth who, like any budding musician on the verge of a breakthrough, had been persuaded by his well-meaning agent to cast aside his old-fashioned birth name in favor of a dashing stage name that would particularly charm the female fans. Yet, it was not Captain Wentworth, lead singer of the Grammy-winning band The Captains – but simply the young man by the name of Frederick Wentworth whom Annie first met in the summer of 2002. Freddie, as he had been called at that time, was a remarkably handsome young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit and brilliancy; and Annie an extremely pretty girl, with beauty, brains, and a benevolent heart to boot. Half of the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he was like any other jaded attractive young man looking for a summer fling, and she, having never been kissed in high school, had been harboring fairy-tale-inspired expectations of romance in anticipation of her freshman year in college; but the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail. They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love. It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been happiest; she, in receiving the affections of the charming eyecandy whom all the girls drooled over at the public pool, or he in having them reciprocated by a girl completely out of his league.
That summer was a short period of exquisite felicity, and but a short one. Troubles soon arose. When news that a local community college student was courting his Duke-bound daughter reached the very important desk of Mr. Walter Elliot, he with great coldness threatened to remove his financial support for her secondary education. He had always considered shunting his least favorite daughter into a corporate alliance via marriage to the heir of a rival company, and the idea of this very degrading alliance with the young aspiring musician was abominable. Her godmother Mrs. Russell, though less concerned with corporative strategies but equally concerned with money, received the relationship as a most unfortunate one.
Annie Elliot, with all her wealth, beauty, and brains, to involve herself at eighteen the summer before her college career with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connections those in the entertainment business to secure even his farther rise in that profession; would be unthinkable! The heiress Annie Elliot, to be canoodling with a stranger without fortune or promise; or rather be sunk by him to the life of a starving artist, of scrounging together tips from waitering and waitressing jobs in order to pay the bills!
Such opposition, as these feelings produced, was more than Annie could combat. Her father and sisters, who had no taste for any sort of music and could not have been expected to take a liking to her musical boyfriend, Annie could have ignored; - but Mrs. Russell, whom she had always loved and relied on, could not, with such steadiness of opinion, and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain. Those summer months marked the beginning and end of their romance; but, not with a few months ended Annie’s share of suffering from it. She entered Duke University with an early loss of bloom and spirits, with no interest in going to Shooters or party-hopping on a Saturday night. Nearly eight years had gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close, and Annie Elliot, at her late twenties, remained as unlikely to ever wed. She did not blame Mrs. Russell, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her; but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to apply to her for counsel, she would direct them to a copy of Avril Lavigne’s song "Sk8er Boi" and let them discern the lesson to be gleaned from the lyrics. All of his expectations, all of his confidence had been justified. His talent and passion had paved the way to his road to stardom. He had, very soon after she ended the relationship and set off for Duke, gotten signed with a music label; and all that he had told her would follow, had taken place. He and his fellow The Captains bandmates, known universally by their “Captain” stage names Captain Harville and Captain Benwick, had distinguished themselves and early gained the ranks of the music charts – and must now, by successive albums and hit songs, own multiple mansions across the globe. She had only People and Rolling Stone magazine for her authority, but she could not doubt his being rich; - and, in favor of his constancy, she had no reason to believe him to be the playboy canoodling with Hollywood starlets on the cover of every tabloid.
She had been forced into prudence into her youth, she learned romance as she grew older – the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.
I will be spending the summer of 2011 in Vietnam for a civic engagement project. Building things, manual labor, teaching schoolkids, et cetera. All expenses paid for by Duke University.
One thing that struck me about Elizabeth Edwards was that she gave up her law career to support her husband's. She was always by his side whenever he ran his political campaigns, even when she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer.
And then it turned out that John Edwards had been having an affair (and tried to excuse it by saying it had happened when her cancer was in remission), and that he had fathered a child with another woman. And that this would essentially ruin his political career indefinitely.
And here I am, stressing and freaking out about the approaching finals week. With all the pressure to score well and get into good graduate/professional schools, it's so difficult to grasp the idea of giving up all of that work, all of that effort for that one person... who happened to be a complete jerk wad. I can't even imagine how I would have felt, but she lived through it.
You see, that photograph is the perfect embodiment of what we're talking about. The cropped hair, the too-cool-for-thou smirk, fashionable skinny tie, the crisp white dress shirt, the elegant vest. Impeccable. Nothing on this Earth is perfect, which is precisely why our lord and leader is from out of this world.
You see, even if the King of all Things Badass did not always look as if chiseled by the hand of God, your loyal subjects could care less that you arose from less than impeccable origins. No -- it is in fact endearing, for your loyal subjects look upon your transformation and see the hope glimmering yonder. From this, your loyal followers learn the sacred truths: (1) Even the Badass One arose from humble beginnings; what separates the stars from the ashes is the will power to succeed, and (2) Don't pick on the overweight kid at school, because if history is any indication, he will become one of the most famous musical artists in his home country and reign as Supreme Ruler of All Things Badass.
O Badass One, I have been a faithful follower of Badassery. I never questioned why you donned a green dinosaur suit.
I never questioned your wardrobe color pallet, the choice of pairing of a leather hot pink jacket with a sky blue muffler, or the sculpting of the Crown of Badassery into the shape of a befuddled pompadour.
In fact, it took much will power to never question your fondness for pairing hot pink with shades of blue.
And even when you appeared with silver hair reminiscent of premature graying, I said nothing, assuming that with a bandmate like G-Dragon changing hair styles like a chameleon every other day, it was understandable that you would feel tempted the same.
Nothing, however, prepared me for what I soon encountered.
Who is this? It looks like the lovechild of Cruella DeVil and Lucius Malfoy...
YOUR ROYAL BADASSNESS?? IT'S YOU?? ARE YOU ILL?? WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOUR HAIR??
listening to old-school Avril brings back so many memories, precisely because so much of my childhood and adolescence is marked not in years but in songs.
"Unwanted" for when i found out Iris died -- the first and only time i ever cried for someone's passing.
"Anything but Ordinary' for those summer days of writing silly song-fics with P in the Stanford quads.
"Sk8er Boi" for the first fictional piece i ever created, the one that years later inspired EP.
"I'm with You" for the One who Got Away.
right now i'm listening to "Nobody's Home" and those chorus girl "oh oh she's lost inside she's lost inside oh oh" refrainsmake me remember when i was lean and sun-kissed, bronzed from playing tennis 2.5 hours per day and head over heels for the older boy who i looked up to and idolized, who made my heart convulse when he confided to me during one of our online conversations that i was one of the few people he could tell anything to. (and now that i think about it, i wasn't as clever at hiding it as i originally thought. oh, the embarrassment of youth.)
i remember that one xanga post i wrote where i listed 25 strings of lyrics from 25 songs and held a contest to see who could recognize the most songs. he got first place. you got second place. you recognized the lyrics... she's lost inside she's lost inside oh oh.
that was how you reentered into my life, you know. back when i actually let people read my writing publicly, there you were leaving witty comments here and there, like some woodpecker pecking holes into the wall between us -- crumbling the barrier, so to speak. and now that i'm thinking about this for the first time in years, i don't even know what on earth made you decide to comment in the first place as if we were old friends. we never talked before then. we were two planets on our predestined orbits, nodding in acknowledgment as we passed on by and nothing more.
