Melusino Mock-Cover

Finally after an entire day of work this mock-cover for an AU story is finished and LOOKING GOOD!

Tw: mention of suicide

‚Melusino‘ is a story I have had in my mind for roughly a year now and have been slowly expanding it bit by bit.

It is the 1940s and Zazu, a former opera and moving pictures star from Berlin has had to exile himself at a pension in the alps from the war raging in Europe. While he once was a prolific celebrity during the weimarer republic and prominent ambassador for the Institute for Genderstudies in his home town, now his life, his accomplishments and his future seem in shambles. With nothing more to loose he rows out onto a lake next to the pension and jumps ship - but a curious creature has followed him and pulls Zazu ashore.

It seems a Merman has put a liking onto the exiled singer and follows him (as best as possible) everywhere Zazu goes and forces him to rethink the potentially fatal choice he made. Reluctant at first Zazu warms up to his new companion; he now spends most of his time at the lake, organizes undercover trips downtown to show his aquatic friend more of the world and gives the Merman a name,- Melusino, the male pendant to the title of the last opera he sang before he had to flee.

But it doesn‘t take long and mysterious things start to happen with Melusino, but he is reluctant to open up to Zazu about them. Meanwhile the war tenses up and Zazu, always in danger of being labeled as ‚depraved‘, is increasingly running out of excuses why his papers proving his legitimacy aren‘t arriving.

A storm is building at the horizon that will change a world. - But will it be above or below the surface?

I haven‘t even started writing this, merely planning it out and doing some research here and there. First of all I know nothing about life of a queer, exiled artist during the 2.WW. I want to make things seem tense and dangerous for Zazu, but not too much. It is not a dark story, I still want to let all the romanticism of the northern Italian alps shine through.

What inspired me alot for this was of course Porco Rosso by Studio Ghibli, Hans Christian Andersen‘s Little Mermay story, all the mermay-themed operas (there‘s quite a few!) and an expedition I did to Annecy a few years back.

With this story I wanted to stay in this universe and really explore what Zazu‘s life as a queer individual in Berlin during the Weimarer Republic would have looked like, aswell as having to go stealth when the Nazis took over. I am also very intrigued by the lore surrounding Mermaids. In every Mermaid opera you have a protagonist that falls in love with the Mermaid (or the other way round) who wants to desperately be in the same world as the other. But in the end, it not only doesn‘t work out but the subject that dared to voice the desire of being in another world is then punished, and in a moral sense this tells us that if we dare to desire things out of our place we will be punished too. You rarely to never find a mermaid story that ends well. (Spoiler: this one does haha)

On the other hand are Mermaids a very fascinating symbol for sexual awakening/self-discovery. I find the parallels between being above and below the water surface and coming out as gay or staying closeted very interesting. During that time in Europe coming out at all would have been a very personal process, something the individual had to come to terms with on their own; being publiscly ‚out’ was impossible so it is more of a process of self-actualization and identification, not societal. But to me this internal discovery is nonetheless an important step away from repression (and fascism. Isn‘t fascism just pure repression?). Melusino is not only infatuated with Zazu but also wants to be part of his world with him, which Zazu cannot understand: the world at that time is a bad place, he wouldn‘t want anyone to enter it as it is. But things that have been awakened can also not be put back to sleep.

So far my thoughts on this for you guys. What do you think? Is this even interesting?😂 I just want to have an excuse to paint an entire story in this style