East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Acknowledgments, Notes, and Soundtrack
Acknowledgments
First off is kaiserkuchen. You guys, I got seriously, seriously lucky when she picked to do art for my story. If for some reason, you haven't looked at that art yet, GO RIGHT NOW. Do you see that? AMAZING. Colorful, super creative, atmospheric, just plain beautiful; I'm so in love with them all. And not only is she a fantastic artist, but she put up with me going "no one is going to read this" and "I don't know what to doooo with it now D:" so many times that she should be classified as a saint. ALSO also, she's helped me revise this a ton, both with informal suggestions at the beginning and then an actual thorough beta later on. Last also: she is just a very delightful, enthusiastic person to work with, and her cheerfulness totally kept me from like, tossing this over a cliff several times. I cannot sing her praises enough!
Next, I'd like to thank the mods, for organizing this whole thing, and for being so nice and understanding! I ended up having a lot of questions at the last minute, which I'm sure must have been annoying to answer, but not once were the mods anything but polite. YAY for mods and all their hard work!
Third up, uh...my parents? Who will never read this, but put up with me being crazy this week, and kept checking in to see how my "writing project" was going, hahaha. *grin* And on the subject of RL people, a shout-out to one of my BFFs, who gave me track 10 of the soundtrack and patiently helped when I went "Do you have music that sounds like water/more cello suites/something that sounds peaceful/etc. D:?"
NO ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO: Technology. Seriously. Posting this was a nightmare that involved my computer being glacially slow, me shoving up badly formatted versions of everything just so I could try and get it in on time, and actually a decent amount of data loss in the eleventh hour. YEAH. I believe I've got it all back to where it ought to have been the night it went up, but my sincere apologies to anyone who read it in its first ugly form. :\ Better now, I promise!
Notes on Fairytales
Um, perhaps I am the only one who is interested in this, BUT you never know, so I'll ramble on about the different fairytales and inspirations I used in this for a bit. Needless to say, spoilers for the fic, so don't read this until you've read that.
First off, a general thing: I am definitely quite obsessed with fairytales myself. (Really, laulan? WE COULDN'T TELL.) I don't know how many books of them I actually have, but suffice to say it's a lot. I love the Disney kind--where everything really does end up happily ever after, few strings attached--but I also love equally the weird, absurd, dark ones that you find in earlier collections, where things are twisted up and just completely bizarre. On that note, two actual and excellent books are directly referenced/used here: The Annotated Brothers Grimm and Italian Folktales, collected by Italo Calvino. The story Jared's reading to Jensen when he's sick is "Briar Rose" from Grimms, and of course Italian Folktales is one of the books Jensen's checking out at the library. (And, it must be added, one of my favorite books of all time.) Also mentioned is some vague unexpurgated version of The Arabian Nights: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. I didn't give a specific title because I'm not sure which is the agreed "good" translation to read, but any of the translations are fascinating.
Another general note: I'm sure I owe some mention to Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad, and to the many genre and narratological theorists in my literature classes whose names I can no longer remember, for the idea of how stories work in this universe. My version is somewhat different from that of Witches Abroad, but I'm going to say that the general idea came from that, because I read it a couple years ago, and I think it had a formative influence on me. It's an excellent book!
Now, on to specifics:
East of the Sun and West of the Moon, or sometimes just "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," is an actual story, which runs pretty much along the lines of Danneel's summary. White polar bear! Wikipedia tells me it's originally Scandinavian, though I feel like I might have read the Russian version first. This is one of my favorites of the "searching for a loved one" type of fairytales.
The Peacock King is vaguely, vaguely based on the story "The King of Peru" from Italian Folktales in that there is a peacock king and a weird palace of peacock-people in the latter. The storyline in "The King of Peru" is quite different, though; basically, I just wanted some sort of transformed animal king, so I muddied and mixed stories up until I had what I wanted. Most fairytales I've seen with animal royalty end up with the hero or heroine marrying said royalty and breaking the curse laid on them. Not so here! My Peacock King is more of a Bluebeardish figure, I suppose. Fun fact: I also considered making him a cat king, as in some type of a big zoo cat.
The Ogres are a pretty common motif, I think. Usually a scene like that comes into play when a young couple are running from a parent who is trying to stop them from being wed. One or other of the couple will hamper the parent or witch, etc., by working magic or throwing down items they received from three helpful figures along the road to stop them.
Gordian Knot: I realized in the first version that I totally have this reading "Damocles' Sword;" I have no idea what I was thinking, because that is an allusion that doesn't make sense at all, haha. The Gordian Knot is that famous story about Alexander the Great's awesome impatience solving a problem. From Wikipedia: "In 333 BC, while wintering at Gordium, Alexander the Great attempted to untie the knot. When he could find no end to the knot, to unbind it, he sliced it in half with a stroke of his sword, producing the required ends (the so-called "Alexandrian solution")."
I think that's about it! I have lots of stuff about how magic works here that I didn't put in because it was unnecessary to the actual story, so if you have questions, I will be happy to answer them!
Soundtrack
(East of the Song and West of the Tune--okay, it's not really called that, I just wanted to use horrible puns.)
I don't know if anyone is interested in this either, but I made it, so it might as well go up here! Er, I have never done one of these before, so if I uploaded it wrong, please tell me and I'll be happy to try and fix it! Lovely cover art, track list, and explanations directly below.
Download HERE at Megaupload or HERE at Mediafire
(I can upload it somewhere else if those aren't convenient for someone.)
So, I wanted to do something different for the music in this. In movie adaptations of fairytales, the soundtrack is almost always scored; plus, it's hard to find worded songs to go along with the general feel of a fairytale. So I thought I'd try to make an entirely instrumental soundtrack! I did not quite succeed--3 songs have vocals--but I'm fairly pleased with the end result. Most of these are kind of classical, but there's a decent few that aren't.
1. Dreaming; I'm Sure I've Forgotten Something: "Nocturne" by Paul Schwartz, Earthbound. This song is absolutely beautiful and haunting. I have no idea if it's from something--I feel like it should be, it's too perfect to not be--but either way, this is the general theme for the story overall. It very much captures the feeling of something missing that Jensen just can't shake--something important and wonderful and magic, that he'll end up travelling to the figurative ends of the earth to get back.
2. Enter Genevieve: "Ravel's String Quartet in F Major (Second Movement)" by Ysaÿe Quartet, The Royal Tenenbaums. Genevieve is rather wild when she comes to Jensen: she's determined to press the urgency of the situation into his mind. This song fits her "strange electric intensity," as Jensen describes it, exactly. It's also a bit playful, which is something I imagine a sea nymph being.
3. The Palace of the Birds: "Phalese: Galliarde d'Ecosse" by Minstrels Gallery, Susato, Cantional, De La Torre, Vermell, Henry VIII, Attaignant, Arbeau, Le Roy, Judenkunig, Phalese, Monteverdi, Cornysh, Ravenscroft: Entertaining The Tudors. Wow, that's long. This is the type of thing I imagine playing in the court of the Peacock King when Jensen first arrives. It's not exactly menacing, but there's a hint of that otherworldly fantasy Jensen finds so jarring.
4. Battle of Riddles, Escape from Paradise: "Vivaldi: Violin Concerto In F Minor, Op. 8/4, RV 297, "The Four Seasons (Winter)" - 3. Allegro" by John Holloway; Jean-Claude Malgoire: La Grande Écurie Et La Chambre Du Roy, Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, Violin Concerti. Jensen challenges the Peacock King to a duel of words, and the Palace crumbles around them. Tense and dramatic, and again, this fits well with the type of music I imagine might be played in the Peacock King's court.
5. Theme for Alchemy: "Three Women" by Rachel Portman, Chocolat Soundtrack. Sandy and Alchemy get their own theme! Chocolat has an excellent soundtrack; this has just the mix of mystery, excitement, sweetness, and calm steadiness I wanted for Sandy.
6. Our Heroes Set Off: "From Western Woods to Beaversdam" by Harry Gregson-Williams, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This is what would play as Sandy and Jensen made the drive to Danneel's place.
7. Theme for Storytelling: "Allegro ben moderato e cantabile," by Lothar Hensel, Bandoneon, Konzert fuer Bandoneon. Danneel and Storytelling get a theme, too--in this case, to reflect how it's being used against the three of them, and the power that is has. This is what would play as Danneel explained what 'east of the sun and west of the moon' meant, and they readied themselves to leave. This is pretty damn dramatic--meant to mirror the way they're all feeling when faced with the somewhat impossible task of finding and rescuing Jared from the otherworld.
8. Jensen and Jared Are in Love: "Falling Slowly" by Kris Allen, Kris Allen - EP. I don't even watch American Idol, but I came across this song somewhere, and I love it because I am a sap. This starts off the section where Jensen's remembering Jared in his dreams, and hence, the beginning of their relationship. I don't go into backstory of their separate lives, but I imagined Jensen as never having expected anyone like Jared to come into his life, being totally kind of blindsided by him. In awe of how bright and amazing he was, and unsure where the whole thing would take him, or how heartbroken he'd be if it didn't work out. And kind of just giving into chance and going for it anyway.
- I don't know you, but I want you all the more for that. Words fall through me and always fool me, and I can't react. -
9. MFEO: "Happiness Writes White" by Harvey Danger, Little by Little. This is just a lovely, happy, being-in-love song. Jensen and Jared are pretty damn happy in love in this story, I'd like to think. They make each other happy! They're totally MFEO.
- When I consider what you mean to me, it's everything. It's everything. -
10. Awakening: "Suite No. 2, S. 1008 - Sarabande" by Yo-Yo Ma, The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites. Strong, strong contrast to the previous: Jensen wakes up and now remembers exactly how awful it is that Jared's in danger.
11. Ogre Chase: "Diablo Rojo" by Rodrigo y Gabriela, Rodrigo y Gabriela. This song is energetic and just ridiculously awesome: devilish acoustic guitar. It's a perfect chase song, and totally captures the feeling I was trying for in that scene.
12. I Wasn't There: "Orbly Resting" by Tin Hat Trio, Memory Is an Elephant. Jensen's last memory clicks into place.
13. Jeff's Place: "Dead Already" by Thomas Newman, American Beauty Soundtrack. Jeff's place has big significance for all the characters. It's a home, and a sanctuary. It's full of possibilities and magic, with this sort of deep love underneath it all. Title aside, this song pretty much feels like all that to me.
14. Theme for the North Wind: "Chopin: Etude #6 In G Sharp Minor, Op. 25/6, CT 31" by Mikhail Pletnev, Chopin: Sonata #3, Waltzes, Etudes, Etc. This is wild and has the kind of spiraling, eddying undertones to it that I imagine the North Wind would have.
15. The White Tower and the Gordian Knot: "Molto moderato" by Lothar Hensel, Bandoneon, Konzert fuer Bandoneon. Jensen enters the otherworld and slips into the tower to rescue Jared, and the ensuing chase.
16. We're Gonna Be Fine: "Out Of Egypt, Into The Great Laugh Of Mankind, And I Shake The Dirt From My Sandals As I Run" by Sufjan Stevens, Come On Feel The Illinoise! This is the boys' version of happily ever after, to me: wonderful and hopeful, and even though everything's not perfect, they know they're together, and they love each other enough to work through the rest.
17. Roll End Credits: "The Call" by Regina Spektor, Prince Caspian. This is the song I listened to 96 times while writing this. The feeling of it really embodies the feeling I wanted to run through the piece: the utter faith between Jensen and Jared. Jared's faith that Jensen would come for him, Jensen's faith in Jared and refusal to ignore his inklings at the beginning; the feeling that they'll do anything for each other. The way they just believe in each other is one of my favorite things about them in real life, and I hope that came across in East of the Sun and West of the Moon, too, because it's amazing.
- Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light; you'll come back when it's over. No need to say goodbye. -