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Hi everyone!
This is the end of the story, but I wrote a lot of short stories in R&J, so maybe I will translate them too.
Anyway, it is a tradition that I almost always share some interesting background stories from my fics, so there we are!
I want to mention too that this list was relevant one year earlier (I finished the fic in my native language on June 27, 2022). So with this knowledge, read the list!
Last but not least, I want to tell everyone who read, loved, and voted for my story: thank you! And I love you.
Here's the list!
"Hello everyone, once again, for the last time! I wouldn't even expand on the word; let the already promised, usual, interesting, behind-the-scenes part come, that is, the final conclusion."
1. The idea of fanfiction came to me when I accidentally found a video about a month ago in which my favorite K-pop singer is Mozart! He sings the Korean version of his shadow song. This reminded me of how much I used to love musicals, and I came across my old favorite, Romeo and Juliet. Even then, I thought that I should write something on the subject, but in the end, I postponed it until after the exam period, when I reached the point where I somehow don't have the capacity to create anything more serious right now. Here it gave itself to me so that I could use my sarcastic nature and my sometimes tiresome sense of humor: (Because I don't love making jokes or caricatures out of anything else more than what I love anyway).
2. I originally planned it for one part, but as I started, I realized that the first chapter was already longer than I expected, so I divided it into several shorter chapters (or one day = one chapter, except for June 20, when I left to clean up from the college dorm). By the way, the title was inspired by a Stephen King short story, which is also called The Breathing Exercise (although it is about something completely different), and I tried to give each part a title that has something to do with breathing (or suffocation).
3. I once shot the "he was happy as if it were Black Friday" joke somewhere, quite specifically here: https://snitt.hu/filmnezesek/20736967 "This British Grand Prix is still exciting, along with Hamilton's, quote-unquote, 'punishment'. "The nice thing is, by the way, that even Bottas' girlfriend applauded the way he let Hamilton go... The Mercedes approx. celebrated like it was Black Friday. "
4. "The dark-haired boy closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and counted to three in English (and then in French, Italian, German, Russian, Hebrew, and Hungarian). He actually spoke many languages." I wanted a funny reference to be the adaptations of the musical in different languages (I didn't list them all, so I left out Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Romanian, Flemish, etc.). Even Tibi may have limitations.
5. I endowed Tybalt with my own qualities in many ways: bitter irony, he studies profusely at the beginning of the semester, reads and stores information at random, protects his personal aura like a grumpy cat, is tormented by the compulsion to conform and perfectionism, finds it difficult to open up to others, had a lonely adolescence, loves Nirvana, shows itself to be tougher than it is (let's just say I'm starting to give up and put up with the fact that I'm a flufball...), and sometimes it's tormented by specific mass disgust (heh, and my favorite color is black, or at least, very dark gray). But no, I can't play the guitar. I'm just saying it before someone else judges me too sympathetically. It's funny because I didn't even like this character for a long time.
6. "I'll take a knife and stab him to death!" a clear reference to the musical.
7. I changed Tybalt's feelings for Julia to a kind of brotherly love (since this is not the age when we like incest anymore...) because I thought the relationship between the two characters could be suitable to show the more emotional side of the character.
8. "So what does it matter who the kitten's tail curls at, right?" Inspired by one of the theme songs from the movie Cat City (a Hungarian animation movie): "Your green eyes flash in the dark, and your tail curls boldly."
9. "Anyway, what kind of person is this Tybalt? Benvolio continued his questioning. The idea came from a scene in the drama in which Benny is similarly interested in Tybalt.
10. "Of course, because you two are so straight, it's almost homophobic!" I read something similar in the Swedish novel The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo (either in that one or in the second part, I don't remember exactly). By the way, I included the part where the three friends are talking because I wanted to give something back to the dynamic that can be found between them both in the drama and the musical.
11. I thought for a long time about what to watch with the two protagonists during the filming, then I finally stayed with Friends because I'm currently watching it as well (I started from the very beginning in December), and I felt that it fits Mercutio.
12. In the "Blow" chapter, when our heroes are cleaning up, I faintly hint that Tybalt has mild OCD.
13. When Julia says that Paris tried to squeeze a date out of her for Thursday, it is also a reference to the drama.
14. In the Hungarian musical, Tybalt is epileptic; in the fic, I changed this to panic disorder (because it's an old wise saying to write about what you know). I know that better.
15. "I've heard about the water palm before; an acquaintance complained that her cat kept chewing it." I took it from one of Magda Szabó's novels, in which she described how their cat Éva was similarly fond of the water palm: she chewed it regularly, then threw it up on the carpet...
16. The conflict of the chapter "Bennragad" was based on a real experience: the drain got clogged in our dormitory once, and one of my roommates and I tried to remedy the situation with a similar homemade technique, but it didn't work for us, so we ended up buying a special drain cleaner. That solved the problem, so we avoided having to tell the satanic cleaning lady.
17. "I'll think about it tomorrow—this is a wisdom I've recycled many times, which I first read about in Gone with the Wind, and I regularly include it in my writings.
18. "Let's put it this way: the only thing more stupid than this would be if you stood up in front of your parents and announced that you are transferring to the Faculty of Humanities." Joke about myself, who anyway goes to the faculty of humanities and over the years has already received regularly that he is wasting his time in what an old-fashioned place, the humanities are all stupid, and McDonald's is just waiting for us—let's say, this last joke is already starting to wear out, considering that a salesman there earns more than a beginning teacher these days...
19. "How did the girl become a gate and the cat has gotten stuck?" A joke taken from one of the songs of the musical ("They say the problem is that the girl became a gate!") You had no right.
20. Although my goal was basically a frivolous, lemonade-type fic, over time I explored more serious topics, and, in the end, I wanted to sharpen the relationship between the two protagonists so that they mutually helped and supported each other and brought out the best in each other.
21. Drama was the pattern for the Capulet parents (at least for the father; the mother is more like in the Hungarian musical), while for the Montague family (mostly Mrs. Montague), the musical was the model.
22. When Tybalt reflects on the fact that you can recognize a person's personality by the way they close a door, I drew it from real life: personally, I also recognize who came through the door from the family by the way they open it. Or how to close it: nicely, in a way, or push it in so that afterwards the walls just shake inside it...
23. I don't want to list all the references; let that be enough. I enjoyed referring back to both the drama and the musical. 3
24. As I already mentioned, it originally started as a completely frivolous, "lighthearted" work, and then over time it became much more serious (although I couldn't stop my parenthetical comments, just like here). Just like the drama: it starts like a comedy, then it gets more and more gloomy, and finally the tragedy culminates (I rather skipped the latter, I hope you don't mind :))
25. I finished the last part yesterday, and today, between two shifts, I watched the 2010 French version... And guys, they actually flirt in it! (No, it's not my fic writer's mind that combines; this, based on comments, caught the eye of many.) If I see it first, I will never deny that I was inspired by it (because it was absolutely not anyway).
26. All in all, it was a pleasure to write this fic, if only because it pulled me out of a long-standing writer's crisis: I had written before, almost daily, but I struggled with it and didn't really enjoy it; school and a busy schedule didn't help either. But while I was working on it, I realized how much I still love it, and it was actually a great feeling to release my unscrupulous, sarcastic self, which I've been harboring until now but somehow never had the chance to really enjoy.