Why Corpse Bride?
So, after my last post, I felt I should explain a little more about the title of the project, Corpse Bride.
To understand, we first have to go back to late the past summer, 2016. I was reviewing some material from my past writings in the Book of the Shadows series, particularly the stunted saga of Nocturne of the Shadows. In Nocturne, there is a part of the story, more or less surrounding the introduction of Aki Izayoi to that story. In the plan I had for that part of the story, there is a duel school that has a secret competition called Duelists of the Roses, the winner of contests awarded an engagement to the Rose Bride.
This whole business was meant to be a twist on the story of the 90's anime, Revolutionary Girl Utena, replacing the sword duels of the Utena series with the card game duels of the Yu-Gi-Oh universe. Within the BotS series,. Without delving too much further into detail there, that is the story I was thinking about.
At roughly the same time, I began watching Magical Knight Rayearth, one of the stories from the branching and intertwined universe of stories from CLAMP. I wasn't really planning on using the Rayearth story. I've dabbled with the whole "stuck in another world" story a few times, but it's not one I'm terribly keen on using much just because the power I've engendered in my leads tends to thwart that scenario without overly convenient plot devices. I end up contriving some manner of faulty reasoning for why a character can't just leave as they want, why their power is limited to such an extent, etc.
In any event, my thinking wound up drifting through my many unfinished stories. The Rayearth story did have some appeal as a sort of story that I could see Drusilla and Yugi from the Cromwell Universe observing from a distance. Plus it'd be a personal bonus any time I could weave a CLAMP tale into one of my own.
I didn't think it'd happen with Rayearth, so I didn't put much more thought into it. Still, the general story, as far as the pillar system, was something that from a governance standpoint was interesting to think about. A subplot of the Cromwell Universe stories deals with the different forms of government that Drusilla encounters in her conquest, and how she interacts with them. A system that runs on the will of a single person to support the world, not in just a symbolic sense as with Drusilla's rule over the Arenzai, but in the material sense that the fall of one person dooms the world, is a thorny issue to work through in a practical standpoint.
Thinking from that view, it's the sort of no-win situation that I'd love to try and debate out. And so I started working on the idea of how to weave that sort of story. The Rayearth story, in a strange sense, is too fanciful for Cromwell. There is too much of a general sense of "it'll just work out because we believe" sort of sentiment. That was literally the central theme - Cephiro was a world where the power of the heart controlled everything, so if you just believe strong enough anything could happen. Cromwell Universe for all its supernatural aspects is still based around a sense of logical outcome - you will lose sometimes because the bad guy is just stronger, better, smarter, etc.
What I ended up with was a story like Rayearth, but not like Rayearth. The role of the pillar is technically kept, but the mythos instead has thirteen pillars, empowered by a sort of 14th central pillar. At first I was going to try and tie in some sort of Sephirot angle. Basically each pillar was going to represent an aspect of Sephirot, with there being 3 or 4 "fake" who didn't know they were fakes - an idea I was hoping to use from Rokka of the Six Braves. But sure enough I just can't manage to make it work the way I want, so I gave up pretty quick on the Sephirot part. I'll probably keep the "false pillar" scenario because that's simple enough given the basic metrics of how something like that would work.
Going back to Utena, this is a lot like the scenario the encapsulates the main cast and their fight over the Rose Bride and End of the World. But the story in its details are too different, so instead I chose to go with something different. Thinking that, I didn't want to use the title "Rose Bride" and suggest too strongly that I was making that sort of nod to the Utena story. At the same time, there is a nod there. With Halloween coming up as the next big holiday, and thinking I might make this into some sort of horror story, Corpse Bride made sense.
The impetus to make it a horror story faded, but the title, Corpse Bride, still stuck. In my story, the title arises from a tale that says she rose up from a mountain of corpses wearing a flowing dress dyed crimson from the blood, as if she were a bride among corpses. Filled with grief and anguish for the suffering of those corpses, she awoke to an incredible power that allows her to be the support for the once dying world. Sharing that power with thirteen individuals she believe are best suited for the purpose, they have become the pillars that support the world, maintaining the peace and bounty of nature.
And that's where the name came from. As I've said before, I still have a lot of work to do on the overall story, and to figure out where it'll fit into the overall Cromwell story, so don't look for too much more soon. But, I do hope this adds some flavor to my artwork from yesterday.
To understand, we first have to go back to late the past summer, 2016. I was reviewing some material from my past writings in the Book of the Shadows series, particularly the stunted saga of Nocturne of the Shadows. In Nocturne, there is a part of the story, more or less surrounding the introduction of Aki Izayoi to that story. In the plan I had for that part of the story, there is a duel school that has a secret competition called Duelists of the Roses, the winner of contests awarded an engagement to the Rose Bride.
This whole business was meant to be a twist on the story of the 90's anime, Revolutionary Girl Utena, replacing the sword duels of the Utena series with the card game duels of the Yu-Gi-Oh universe. Within the BotS series,. Without delving too much further into detail there, that is the story I was thinking about.
At roughly the same time, I began watching Magical Knight Rayearth, one of the stories from the branching and intertwined universe of stories from CLAMP. I wasn't really planning on using the Rayearth story. I've dabbled with the whole "stuck in another world" story a few times, but it's not one I'm terribly keen on using much just because the power I've engendered in my leads tends to thwart that scenario without overly convenient plot devices. I end up contriving some manner of faulty reasoning for why a character can't just leave as they want, why their power is limited to such an extent, etc.In any event, my thinking wound up drifting through my many unfinished stories. The Rayearth story did have some appeal as a sort of story that I could see Drusilla and Yugi from the Cromwell Universe observing from a distance. Plus it'd be a personal bonus any time I could weave a CLAMP tale into one of my own.
I didn't think it'd happen with Rayearth, so I didn't put much more thought into it. Still, the general story, as far as the pillar system, was something that from a governance standpoint was interesting to think about. A subplot of the Cromwell Universe stories deals with the different forms of government that Drusilla encounters in her conquest, and how she interacts with them. A system that runs on the will of a single person to support the world, not in just a symbolic sense as with Drusilla's rule over the Arenzai, but in the material sense that the fall of one person dooms the world, is a thorny issue to work through in a practical standpoint.
Thinking from that view, it's the sort of no-win situation that I'd love to try and debate out. And so I started working on the idea of how to weave that sort of story. The Rayearth story, in a strange sense, is too fanciful for Cromwell. There is too much of a general sense of "it'll just work out because we believe" sort of sentiment. That was literally the central theme - Cephiro was a world where the power of the heart controlled everything, so if you just believe strong enough anything could happen. Cromwell Universe for all its supernatural aspects is still based around a sense of logical outcome - you will lose sometimes because the bad guy is just stronger, better, smarter, etc.
What I ended up with was a story like Rayearth, but not like Rayearth. The role of the pillar is technically kept, but the mythos instead has thirteen pillars, empowered by a sort of 14th central pillar. At first I was going to try and tie in some sort of Sephirot angle. Basically each pillar was going to represent an aspect of Sephirot, with there being 3 or 4 "fake" who didn't know they were fakes - an idea I was hoping to use from Rokka of the Six Braves. But sure enough I just can't manage to make it work the way I want, so I gave up pretty quick on the Sephirot part. I'll probably keep the "false pillar" scenario because that's simple enough given the basic metrics of how something like that would work.
Going back to Utena, this is a lot like the scenario the encapsulates the main cast and their fight over the Rose Bride and End of the World. But the story in its details are too different, so instead I chose to go with something different. Thinking that, I didn't want to use the title "Rose Bride" and suggest too strongly that I was making that sort of nod to the Utena story. At the same time, there is a nod there. With Halloween coming up as the next big holiday, and thinking I might make this into some sort of horror story, Corpse Bride made sense.
The impetus to make it a horror story faded, but the title, Corpse Bride, still stuck. In my story, the title arises from a tale that says she rose up from a mountain of corpses wearing a flowing dress dyed crimson from the blood, as if she were a bride among corpses. Filled with grief and anguish for the suffering of those corpses, she awoke to an incredible power that allows her to be the support for the once dying world. Sharing that power with thirteen individuals she believe are best suited for the purpose, they have become the pillars that support the world, maintaining the peace and bounty of nature. And that's where the name came from. As I've said before, I still have a lot of work to do on the overall story, and to figure out where it'll fit into the overall Cromwell story, so don't look for too much more soon. But, I do hope this adds some flavor to my artwork from yesterday.
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