Fanfic: Gloriously Ever After; Pas Seul (Princess Tutu)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Drabbles: Gloriously Ever After; Pas Seul
Fandom: Princess Tutu (anime version)
Character(s): Piqué; Fakir
Pairing(s): None
Rating: G
Word Count: 200
Warnings: None.
A/N: More Princess Tutu drabbles: these have been sitting as ideas for a while, but I finally managed to reduce them to text this morning. I hadn't planned to repeat anyone in this ongoing drabble sequence (collected together here), but my muse appears to have determined otherwise. I'm also venturing into the ballet student's mindset on minimal research; corrections and concrit welcomed with wild leaps back and forth across the stage. Crossposted from nebroadwe to princesstutu and tutufic.
Dedication: Still for fmanalyst, until she gets bored or annoyed and tells me to stop.

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Gloriously Ever After (Piqué)

      Her days are full: from cockcrow to curfew she studies, chats, laughs and practices, practices, practices. Her ambition has grown like climbing ivy: she longs to dance Aurora or Coppélia and hear applause in foreign accents. The dream's so strong it empties her sometimes; she reaches out and finds only the barre to grasp -- no friendly hand, no cheerful voice, only stumbling inadequacy and pain.

      But other times that vacancy seems a promise: the quiet before the overture, the blank page on which to write a happy ending. Then she raises one arm en haut and chassés into the future.

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Pas Seul (Fakir)

      He's an inspired soloist, challenging his seniors for featured roles, but to be king of the variations is to be damned with faint praise and he knows it. Impatient to improve, he wishes his teacher wouldn't pair him with his fellow beginners, who titter and trip no matter what he does. His support becomes assertion: he pulls each hesitant girl into the proper attitudes, hurrying her tardy feet across the floor. "Enough!" the teacher exclaims, one ear flicking impatiently. "Before you partner another, you must learn to trust yourself. Sit!"

      He sits, brows lowered, disdaining comfort and concealing his confusion.

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Author's Note: A very grainy video of Piqué's exit is available here.

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[Disclaimers: Princess Tutu was created by Ikuko Ito and Junichi Sato. Copyright for this property is held by HAL and GANSIS/TUTU. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[animeshen.livejournal.com]

these are so cool, I love seeing that you've posted. Short but sweet and full of depth and character. I hope to read more!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I have a few more in the queue, but they won't be hurried -- Duck's in particular is giving me trouble and that one above all needs to be good. So I'm setting it aside to work on some other, longer things first.

Peace!

[mangaka-chan.livejournal.com]

Pique's ficlet was lovely and quite believable as you noted her aspirations. But I was rather confused by the first sentence in Fakir's ficlet. I think the ballet and dance references lost me.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I've been having the opposite reaction myself, worrying that Piqué's drabble is too general. The mentions of Aurora and Coppélia are all that remain of a more focused reference to the Eleki Troupe that got compressed out -- I wanted to bring up that poster of theirs she has on her wall and suggest that it was seeing Paulamoni dance that excited Piqué's ambition, but I ran out of room. I also wanted to associate the feeling of "hopeful absence" more strongly with Duck not being in her place by Piqué's side anymore, but the explicit pointer to that got compressed out, too. So now I'm all depressed. ;-)

Would a footnote explaining that a variation is a solo dance help make sense out of Pas Seul's first sentence? The leading roles in classic ballet always involve partnership; if you're not a good partner, you're relegated to the second tier even if you're a great soloist. Does that also need footnoting?

[mangaka-chan.livejournal.com]

I think a footnote would be helpful. I mean, I know what a soloist is, but I didn't know that if one could not dance well with a partner one gets shunned to the side. That was probbaly what I was confused about.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Good to know. I'll grab my all-purpose ballet reference book tomorrow and see if I can pull up something suitably authoritative and clear. Actual balletomanes explain all this stuff much more clearly than I can.