Jamais Plus

• prince.oubliette.nu ↠
• Subject — Le Petit Prince
• Medium — Musical
• Release date — 11 September 2015
• Participant in — One Page, One Month: ENCORE Marathon

Keywords

• adaptation
• French-English translations
• journey
• recommendations
• praise and evaluation
• lyrics
• lighting techniques
• faithfulness
• love
• additions
• unique tools of each medium
• comparisons

Making of

• Quick Departure

  I used the One Page, One Month: ENCORE Marathon to shrine something I would definitely never have shrined otherwise, as it is very niche. Having already written two shrines shortly before for the One Page, One Month Marathon (In Control, which turned out much bigger, and Awakening), I didn’t want to make anything too elaborate or straining. As a result, this shrine was finished within a week.

• Cheating the System

  I heavily relied on collapsible divs in this layout (something which I had always wanted to try out since seeing them elsewhere) not necessarily by choice but because… I had to cheat the system. The page was getting too long for my liking, and after the recent failure with In Control, I didn’t want to have to “lose” yet another shrine that was intended to be a one page shrine. I’m not sure whether you’re supposed to do that for a marathon that is meant to challenge you to present your content all in one piece, but… I’m not the only one who has done this, and I think these cases are rare enough. I do feel bad about it though.
  
  My only defense is that all the screencaps I included for the various stations of the journey are, thanks to the collapsible divs, presented just like a gallery when you first see them. That’s particularly nice as they showcase the musical’s variety in the stage work and lighting.

• Established Audience

  This shrine is also markedly different from the others as it’s a shrine that is aimed at an audience that already knows crucial parts of the source material — because Jamais Plus covers an adaptation. There is no introduction whatsoever, as I didn’t want to roll up Le Petit Prince just to write about its adaptation. It’s similar to how, when I’m reading a video game review of a remake or remaster, I’m not interested in seeing a reevaluation of what already existed in the original: I’m interested in the quality, additions, faithfulness and changes concerning the new product.
  
  Since these Making of sections are supposed to help whoever reads them, however, I’ll briefly talk about audience here despite adaptations being a slightly different case. Know this: How your shrine is written and structured heavily depends on which audience you’re writing to. That isn’t something bad, it’s just something different, but you have to be aware of it before you set out writing. I’ve written about it when I talked about summaries on In Control, but it goes beyond that: A shrine that plunges right into analysis and essays requires visitors to already be familiar with the subject, or at least be open-minded enough to give those pages a read so as to be introduced to the subject indirectly. Not every visitor is as open as that, but it gives you the chance to analyze things deeply from the very start.
  
  I love writing analysis; it’s what I call writing freely. However, because I aim to write shrines at a mixed audience, including those not familiar with the subject and those who may not have the subject imprinted in their memory as it is in mine, I write lead-ups and introductions — including summaries, all of which are things I don’t particularly care about writing. The compromise I strike to keep it interesting for both myself (while writing those things) and for those already familiar with the subject — and because I think that’s what good recapitulation is supposed to be — is inserting my own observations and analysis into those summaries. Know what you’re comfortable writing about, and structure and outline your shrine accordingly.

• Cross-media Analysis

  This shrine very much reads like some kind of written assignment for school because it’s immensely technical. I compare different mediums: the musical’s lighting, visuals and body language — several physical layers that the book doesn’t have. I contrast them with the book having chapters and allowing changing perspectives and chronology. I analyze the multi-layered elements that come together in the musical to form its own interpretation of Le Petit Prince, and how it does them better or worse. All of that, I assume, has got to be dreadfully boring to most who neither know the book nor the musical. And that’s okay. Because they weren’t my audience from the start!

Retrospect

I had written about this subject before to process my feelings about it, and posted those thoughts on my Dreamwidth and Tumblr to share. When I made the shrine, I copied over some parts while elaborating on others. While I’m glad the marathon gave me the chance to have a deeper look at the technicals of the medium and Le Petit Prince is very dear to me, I don’t feel strongly about the shrine itself.

Though my shrines are often based on translation comparisons as I usually have access to both English and German sources, most of my interests don’t involve French. Therefore, the most fun part about making Jamais Plus was to finally get to work with French, and writing translations of my favourite lyrics while allowing myself to be particular about certain phrasings. I was also careful to mostly use French words for the headings that would be familiar with English speakers. It’d be nice if anyone who visited the shrine warmed up to French.