Landa wants you to hear la musica ...

[linndechir]

Linndechir's guide to writing Landa/Hellstrom:
1) go to a nice café in Berlin, with pictures from old movies on the walls and soft jazz music
2) order a café serré coffee and Apfelstrudel
3) don't forget the cream
4) take notebook
5) write

Result?
After half an hour I decided that porn is boring, that I'd rather have naked Hellstrom with a gun, and that Landa's voice sounds like a waltz by Strauss. I'm not quite sure what happens next.

What follows is a long rambling rant about Landa/Hellstrom, about their character dynamics, about Hellstrom's characterisation, and about the possibility of a chapter three of La musica delle parole. I'm not sure anyone still cares about this. But I had to write down my thoughts to get some order into them, and I thought I'd just post them here in case anyone is still interested in the pairing. If not, you don't want to ...

I finally realised why I couldn't write chapter three of La musica delle parole for such a long time. It's actually very simple: La musica was my very first (to my knowledge, THE very first ever) Landa/Hellstrom-fic. We don't know an awful lot about Hellstrom in the movie, and my fanon about him was still relatively limited. I hadn't decided yet what I wanted to do with the character when I wrote part one of La musica. So Hellstrom was actually a rather weak, pale character in this fic - it all revolved around Landa, Landa was the centre of Hellstrom's and therefore of the reader's attention. I honestly didn't give that much thought to who Hellstrom was at that point, because I focused on writing Landa. I wanted to do justice to probably one of the greatest characters ever written and played in a movie.

I hesitated for a long time before I wrote part two, mainly because the response to part one was so overwhelming. People jumped at me from everywhere, told me it was one of the best fics they had ever read and probably the best fic I had ever written, told me that I really knew how to write Landa, told me that I had made them love the pairing. It was intimidating. Still, I went and kicked myself into writing part two, and few things ever made me as happy as all the reviews I got from people who were not one bit disappointed by the sequel. I know this sounds really arrogant and self-centred, but La musica is one of the few things I've written that I'm really proud of (I usually think most of my older fics are shit). I'm proud of writing the first fic for a pairing, a fic that was apparently good enough to make quite a few other people like it - especially since it was not a very obivous pairing in the movie.

I promised everyone to write a third part, because part two had a very open ending that DEMANDED a sequel. But in addition to the anxiety, the fear of disappointing, of writing a third part that didn't live up to the first two, I had another problem: I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew how to begin part three, but I had no idea how to end it, not even roughly, I didn't know where their relationship was going, didn't even know if it would continue at all. So, instead, I decided to explore a few other possibilities with this pairing. I wrote several other fics, played around with the characters, even completely switched their character dynamics in Five Senses.

Most of all I gave more thought to Hellstrom, who slowly turned into one of my favourite characters ever. I came up with a huge, detailed background story for him (while I could never decide what to do with Landa's past; I have many ideas, but nothing definitive; loose ideas, detached scenes without context, but no coherent background story). Hellstrom became one of these characters for me who are a pleasure to write because I just KNOW how they think. Landa was always a bit difficult - Landa is incredibly complex, Landa is nothing like me; I always had to think about what Landa would do next, what Landa might say, how he might say it. Hellstrom? He just writes himself. I guess I'd be downplaying my characterisation if  I called him a self-insert (although at least his musical tastes are an obvious self-insert ;)), but I just understand him a lot better than I understand Landa. It's like ... I can play certain pieces on the piano without even thinking about them, and others demand constant attention to every single note.

What's the problem?, you might think. Isn't it great that I worked so much on Hellstrom's characterisation? Well, yes, in itself that's a good thing, but unfortunately Hellstrom as I see him now isn't much like Hellstrom in La musica anymore. He's a bit too spineless, too easily intimidated for my taste. Of course, Landa IS terrifying, but I see Hellstrom by now as a much stronger character than I did initially. I've come to see Hellstrom as Landa's equal, his mirror, the one person who can play Landa's game (almost) as well as himself, the one person whom Landa can't fuck over with a smile, a glance and a calculated verbal stab. Landa's superiority is mainly based on the fact that he's older, more experienced, and higher-ranking than Hellstrom - not on the fact that he really is more intelligent or more cunning or more manipulative than Hellstrom. They're very similar in some regards, and at the same time different enough to surprise each other.

TLDR: I feel like I neglected in La musica that Hellstrom is more for Landa than just an entertaining plaything. Landa is deeply fascinated by Hellstrom, because Hellstrom is one of the few people who could possibly be a danger to Landa. And someone of Landa's intellect must occasionally be bored by the stupidity of the world. He'd appreciate someone like Hellstrom.

I just CAN'T write Hellstrom anymore the way I wrote him in La musica. I feel like I'd be writing a spineless, meek shadow of movie-badass Major Creeper (when is the last time I read that epic nickname? IB-Fandom, I miss you!). And now that I finally know what the problem is, I'll have to figure out how to write Hellstrom in part thee of La musica: for the sake of continuity, he basically has to be the same character as the guy in the first two chapters, but for the sake of my sanity (and of better characterisation) I have to twist him a little to give him something like a spine and a brain. Don't worry, he'll still be terrified, he'll still be far from the Hellstrom who scared Landa shitless in Five Senses. But I want to balance their dynamics a little. Landa will still be superior, because otherwise it would just make no sense after the first two chapters. But I need a more active Hellstrom. I need a Hellstrom who is more than just the looking glass through which the reader sees Landa and thinks, "omfg he's scary, but omfg he's also hot!"

I need a Hellstrom who gives Landa a good fight. Not a physical one, but an intellectual and emotional one. Because if he doesn't, Landa will lose interest and get rid of him. Landa got what he want - if Hellstrom wants to stay alive, he'd better convince Landa that he's still more interesting to be around than any other person in Paris.

If that means quoting Schiller, all the better.

Landa quoting Baudelaire would be even more epic, but I don't know how to fit THAT in.


I don't think anyone even bothered to read this ... if you did, thanks for your time. Any ideas? Any feedback? Other than, "Linn, stop whining, stoping rambling pretentious shit, and just write"?

Comments

[linndechir.livejournal.com]

Hey, this is my pretty much public LJ, which means that everyone is more than welcome to pop into any conversation. In fact, that's what LJs are for, right? :)

Thank you so much for the encouragement! I actually have a draft written for part 3, but it needs a lot more editing before I can post it. But I think I can reasonably promise that part 3 will be finished in the foreseeable future. I just refuse to give any date, because then I'd just disappoint. ;) Have a Dieterchen-icon until then. ;)