The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears
asked
Estella Mirai:
How did you come up with the idea for The Stars May Rise and Fall and who's your favorite VK band? Mine is Versailles Philharmonic Quintet.
Estella Mirai
Thank you so much for your question!
As for how I came up with the idea... I've been a Phantom fan for longer that I care to admit, and one of the things that really drew me to that fandom was that there WERE so many different versions of the story. Even the original Leroux novel and the Lloyd Webber musical are significantly different in tone, and once you get into the many, many film versions, books, and yes even fanfiction, I just loved how it was such a universal story that could get SO many different spins on it and never (for me, at least!) get old. If you look back into my old high school notebooks, there were a couple of soon-abandoned attempts at Phantom retellings even back then.
I got into visual kei around the time the book is set, in the early 2000s, and then in 2004, when the movie version of the ALW Phantom musical came out, I got involved in a fanfic community (originally as a reader), and the idea of writing my own retelling started to tug at me again. I remember the moment the bare-bones idea came to me. I was driving, playing X Japan's Blue Blood album, and it was actually "Unfinished" (which plays a small but significant role in the first couple of chapters!) that struck me as a very Phantom song... "just leave and forget me" reminded me so much of the ending of the novel and the musical. And the pieces just sort of fell together after that. I had spent a LOT of time in the visual kei scene both as a fan and as a staff member for a couple of bands, so on top of thinking it was the PERFECT subculture if you wanted to have a guy wearing a mask in a modern story and not have it be TOO bizarre, I also kind of thought it was something that I was in a unique position to tell, having way too much knowledge of both the indie VK scene and too many different versions of Phantom!
As for my favorite VK band, it's a bit of a cliche but definitely X Japan. Their music has just been there for me through too many good times and bad times for me to name anyone else! My favorite band that I've actually seen live is possibly Kaggra, and of course there are the many, many indie bands that I hung out with back in the day, a few of whom are in my acknowledgements!
As for how I came up with the idea... I've been a Phantom fan for longer that I care to admit, and one of the things that really drew me to that fandom was that there WERE so many different versions of the story. Even the original Leroux novel and the Lloyd Webber musical are significantly different in tone, and once you get into the many, many film versions, books, and yes even fanfiction, I just loved how it was such a universal story that could get SO many different spins on it and never (for me, at least!) get old. If you look back into my old high school notebooks, there were a couple of soon-abandoned attempts at Phantom retellings even back then.
I got into visual kei around the time the book is set, in the early 2000s, and then in 2004, when the movie version of the ALW Phantom musical came out, I got involved in a fanfic community (originally as a reader), and the idea of writing my own retelling started to tug at me again. I remember the moment the bare-bones idea came to me. I was driving, playing X Japan's Blue Blood album, and it was actually "Unfinished" (which plays a small but significant role in the first couple of chapters!) that struck me as a very Phantom song... "just leave and forget me" reminded me so much of the ending of the novel and the musical. And the pieces just sort of fell together after that. I had spent a LOT of time in the visual kei scene both as a fan and as a staff member for a couple of bands, so on top of thinking it was the PERFECT subculture if you wanted to have a guy wearing a mask in a modern story and not have it be TOO bizarre, I also kind of thought it was something that I was in a unique position to tell, having way too much knowledge of both the indie VK scene and too many different versions of Phantom!
As for my favorite VK band, it's a bit of a cliche but definitely X Japan. Their music has just been there for me through too many good times and bad times for me to name anyone else! My favorite band that I've actually seen live is possibly Kaggra, and of course there are the many, many indie bands that I hung out with back in the day, a few of whom are in my acknowledgements!
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