(TIME OUT) In Which the Author Does a Complete 180

Yep, that's right. I'm turning myself around. Out of the Gifted Program.

Out of the tar-smelling school. Out of Trump's America. I will fulfill my lifelong dream of cutting my hair and joining the Chinese (propagandic) army to defeat...uh...

whom is she

Trump's America????

OKAY, FINE, I WON'T DO THAT. I need to get into college. (Please forgive me I just had a fun time of accidentally starting a bunch of homework that isn't even due tomorrow and I died a little bit.)

By doing a complete 180, I mean that the end product of my project will be a bit different. By a bit, I literally mean a bit.

So this was a result of the research I've done so far. As you know, my original plan was to write three songs, the first being Liesel, then Max, then Hans.

not him, his face makes me genuinely uncomfortable because he looks 5

Well, after watching that Important Video of Pixar making us all cry, I learned about character themes and relationships. That's right. I'm now an expert on relationships.
So then I thought of how to incorporate that information into my compositions, and I thought about musicals such as Less Miserable (no) and Hamilton. And how they use a lot of the same melody in different songs, and that's because that's a theme representing a character or relationship. This is really easy to see in Hamilton. Alexander starts singing "I am not throwing away my shot" about 83197 times throughout the musical in various songs, and these are all moments where he's about to take a new risk or start a new thing and piss off his family and friends even more. It's like his signature thing. Well, I mean, it is his signature thing. That's the point.

Then, I looked at the three amazing characters I chose. And I thought, who affected the other two the most? Okay, that's difficult, but my mind jumped to Hans. He's definitely the driver of the plot, as he literally teaches Liesel how to read, allowing her to steal books, and then literally lets Max live in his house, allowing him to...live in his house (and strike up a friendship with Liesel). Basically, it's Hans' actions that ALLOW the other characters to be important to each other. And thus, it makes no sense to make his song the last one. He should be the first one, and once I come up with a theme for him, it can be repeated in other songs as his presence and influence urges our characters to do...whatever.

And THEN, I wondered why on Earth I didn't make Liesel the final finale, because she's the namesake of the book and the main character and all around center of everything?? So she should be the most important?? And final????

Glad we had this talk.

Basically, here's my new order:

Song #1: Hans 
Song #2: Max
Song #3: Liesel

AND, while we're pausing, let me just adjust my entire schedule a tad. So the research literally took twice as long as I expected, and I'm hoping the actual songwriting should be a Tad Easier because now I have so much information. Or maybe everything will backfire and I'll have to do my TED talk on failure, but that's not an issue. Actually, that is an issue. Very much an issue.
So now it's looking more like

Week I - Research
Week II - Research, the Sequel
Week III - Song #1
Week IV - Song #2
Week V - Song #3
Week VI - more overflow time because it is evident I can't do things according to plan. Also, if I miraculously have extra time, I will try to combine my three songs (or at least their themes) into a culminating song sort of like "One Day More" from Les Mis. 

I think the songwriting will actually be easier than I thought (or this will come back to bite me very, very hard in a few days) because I've sort of come up with little melodies that may turn into themes. They'll be in some future post, so stay tuned (not like every student basing their project on music has used that pun at least once)!

See you on the other side of the war~