Character meme!
Sep. 9th, 2007 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vulgarweedIt's still music festival season, so I've hard hardly any quality time to spend with the new addition to the household. It doesn't even have a name or a wallpaper pic yet.
So I'll do a meme. (I've been tagged for another great one; I'll do that later.) This one I ganked from a bunch of people on the f-list.
1. Comment to this post with the name of a character that I have written in fic or RP.
2. I will comment telling you the following:
a. What initially prompted me to like the character enough to write about him/her.
b. One of his/her best traits.
c. One of his/her worst traits.
d. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character.
e. The story/chapter/paragraph/phrase where I feel that I truly captured the character.
f. My plans (if any) to write the character in the near future.
And/or: Ask me anything fandom-related, and I will probably answer honestly.
So I'll do a meme. (I've been tagged for another great one; I'll do that later.) This one I ganked from a bunch of people on the f-list.
1. Comment to this post with the name of a character that I have written in fic or RP.
2. I will comment telling you the following:
a. What initially prompted me to like the character enough to write about him/her.
b. One of his/her best traits.
c. One of his/her worst traits.
d. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character.
e. The story/chapter/paragraph/phrase where I feel that I truly captured the character.
f. My plans (if any) to write the character in the near future.
And/or: Ask me anything fandom-related, and I will probably answer honestly.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 08:46 pm (UTC)a. I really feel for him, and relate to him. It's not too hard to identify with someone who isn't sure where his life is supposed to be, and suspecting that wherever he is ain't it.
b. Fairmindedness, compassion.
c. Passivity, tendency to let life pass him by out of indecisiveness. (I can relate to this one big-time)
d. Pretty difficult, really, as indicated by the fact that I so rarely do. What would be really difficult is writing him without Anathema nearby. I should try that! :)
e. I'm gonna have to say it's this double drabble, which is one of the very first GO ones I ever wrote and maybe only the second time I ever wrote Newt/Anathema. A sexual fantasy brought to light; it inspires him enough to bring out his passionate side (though note; he's still a total bottom XD):
Never Again the Burning Times?
So was it really all just an ancient fertility cult? Shadwell would certainly be surprised, or maybe not. It was more plausible than the Malleus Maleficarum anyway.
Amid the mud-spattered caravans and the naked hippies and interesting herbal fumes of the festival, Newt had many more revelations (for all that he found it rather socially awkward). For once it was not just his natural ineptitude with such complicated mechanisms as ribbons that had resulted in him being tied to the Maypole, immobile in a latticework of rainbow satin and grosgrain, leaves in his hair. He convinced the High Priestess of the hosting coven that his spirit guides wanted him to stay there overnight.
As promised, Anathema came to him that night, flushed and lovely in the dark, and armed in the traditional fashion. “Do you admit your guilt, witch?” she demanded sternly, pricking him gently. “Do you renounce your evil? Do you repent?”
“Never!” hissed Newt, watching the curve of her lips, the shadows in her cleavage as she bent to pile wood around his feet.
“Then burn!” she commanded, pressing herself against him and menacing him with a Zippo. The fires that she lit didn’t harm them at all.
f. I have no concrete plans to write him in the immediate future, though I'm sure he'll turn up at some point. This actually makes me want to write Newt!fic.
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Date: 2007-09-09 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 08:57 pm (UTC)a. Er....the whole book? His perspective as a POV character just interacts delightfully with the way I see the world too. I'll have to go with that first conversation in Eden. He's adorable as a snarky snake.
b. Childlike enthusiasm. As beat-down and cynical as he can seem, the things he likes he really likes and doesn't care if he looks like a total geek (although he thinks he's cool).
c. Self-absorption.
d. Appallingly easy. He writes himself; I just type.
e. I'm going to have to go with the first half of Breathless Mouths May Summon, where he shows his tender and his sadistic sides at once by nursing Aziraphale back to health and metaphorically slapping him upside the head as he does it. He knows payback's coming. He's looking forward to it.
f. Got a long WIP going right now - hope to do some adding to it tonight. :D
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Date: 2007-09-09 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 09:36 pm (UTC)b. Courage. He can dither for centuries, but once he knows what he thinks is right to do, he will do it.
c. Rationalization and denial.
d. I have more of a difficulty-variant with him than with Crowley. When something demands to be written from Aziraphale's point of view, it usually comes fairly naturally. But when it doesn't, I have to spend a lot longer sort of working my way in.
e. I'm not sure that I ever have. But I think the closest I've got is probably in The Phoenix and the Turtle, and it's possibly in his actions and what he says at the respective deaths of Bruno and Dee, where I got to write him actually being an angel, with all its baggage and its conflicts.
f. See answer re: Crowley. :D
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Date: 2007-09-09 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 09:55 pm (UTC)b. Ruthless intelligence.
c.. Bitterness. Utter poison, that. I'm sure he's good with poisons because he's done it to himself for so long.
d. Difficult and easy at once - his voice comes fairly naturally to me, but I always wonder if my infatuation makes him too nice. I imagine him reading my accounts of him and rolling his eyes and being utterly vicious about my writing talent or lack thereof, and that helps me get it closer to right. :)
e. Again, I don't know if I ever have. But I still like this exchange between him and Hermione (whom he's shagging, passionately and thoroughly unethically), after she's just killed someone with Dark magic for the first time:
"When you...back when...when you were..."
"When I was a Death Eater?" He said it impatiently.
"Yes. Did you...?"
"Yes."
"It was a long time ago," she said. "You were a different person then."
"Yes and no."
"Have you ever felt...like you were back to sort of what you were like before it all happened?"
"Of course not, that's absurd. You can't ever take back an experience."
Her glass was empty, and he refilled it, nearly wary of her hungry eyes.
"Did you ever...get over it?"
"I haven't the faintest idea what that means," he said coolly. "Please clarify your terms."
"Get over it," she said, deeply gulping wine. "I mean get free of it. To feel normal again, like there's not some kind of monster festering inside, that every time you pick up a wand you're not capable of....anything."
"But you are," he said evenly. "Subject to the laws of magic and limits of your own power of course."
"That's not what I mean! I mean - do you ever feel clean?"
He laughed as he refilled her glass. "Oh, that's what you mean? No, Miss Granger, honestly I don't, ever, and I never have. Clean? No. Souls aren't - they're dirty complicated things. But I don't think it's going to do you a damn bit of good dwelling on how rotten you are when you're still a slightly soiled lamb ripe for slaughter if you're not careful." He sighed and shifted, stretching out his long legs toward her, and surely the way his robe fell away from the scar tissue of his Dark Mark when he slung his arm across the back of the couch could not have been accidental. "What do you really want me to say? Do you want me to say you'll never have to kill again? I won't - Trelawney might if you ask her nicely."
f. I shall, yes. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 10:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 09:13 pm (UTC)a. The Nazgul have always been among my favorite secondary characters in LOTR, because they are so mysterious. I love the fact that JRRT never gave their human selves explicit histories or names (except for one in Unfinished Tales). I love the fact that the full extent of their powers are never made clear--except for their sheer terror, which Tolkien conveys VERY well--and so they stay these shadowy forces that could be capable of almost anything. I'm going to have to say the stalking leading up to the attack on Weathertop is when I first got mesmerized.
b. Loyalty?
c. Overconfidence.
d. Well, the first time I ever wrote him was in a pornographic humor crossover fic, so since I wasn't writing from his POV it was pretty easy, since I just left him as this object of terror (and slightly disgusting lust). The second time I had to live with him in my head for months, it was difficult at first, and then it got so easy I scared myself. I just used my own fear of mortality and cranked it up to 11 to penetrate his motives.
e. Well, The Ring and the Crown is all about him, so that's the obvious choice.
Here's the point where I started to have sympathy for him:
"Here lies my father. If I feared the dead, I would not come, for if they had power at all, surely he would rise up against me. His fleshless jaws are silent, and the ash within his ribs does not rustle.
I cannot say how this grieves me. For surely I have called upon myself the wrath of a power greater than myself, if such a thing should be. Have I not insulted the heavens enough, with every waking hour and feverish dream? Have I not violated every taboo I was ever given? Where is the storm of rage that was promised me? Dearly would I like to see the claws of the wind come calling for my blood, so I might face it. It is that terrible awe I long for.
Even my blasphemy is in vain. The idiot silence of the tomb is the answer to all. "
He wants something, desperately. He wants to find something more powerful than himself to be part of, to be in awe of. And he's striven for it really hard: even the necromancy and patricide he so casually admits to hasn't gotten him there. Or so he thinks.
f. I have no concrete plans to write him again, but he's one of those muses that, once there, never goes away completely. He will appear again, I'm sure - though more likely in a humor fic again. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 10:38 pm (UTC)I can certainly relate to the terror -- I first read LotR at the age of 13, in the full throws of realising my own mortality. Being dream-haunted/-hunted by Nazgul made that point very clear, let me tell you. But I am not of the mental fibre that enjoys horror movies, so I've never felt a wish to delve deeper into the Nazgul. Very much like Dementors, now that I correlate them -- stupidly obvious, now that I've seen the link. I wonder if anyone has ever written a sympathetic story about Dementors? Or a Dementor/Nazgul crossover?
(Oops, sorry, rambling in your journal ....) ;]
no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 11:10 pm (UTC)I kind of am of the mental fibre that enjoys horror--not movies so much as stories, preferably the kind that gives you the deep, deep creeps over the obvious gorefests. (Huge Lovecraft fan as well).
I actually don't see the Nazgul as being more than superficially similar to Dementors. Dementors strike me as just a sort of predatory animal--cunning but not particularly intelligent, and can't really help what they do, foul as they are. The Nazgul started out as humans--powerful and great ones at that--and have only become more powerful as they become less human. They're actually undead spirits, which gives them a whole other level of...something. (They do solidly bungle the task assigned them in LOTR, but I don't think they're meant to come off as stupid...XD)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 11:26 pm (UTC)Not so much superficially as archetypally -- they occupy the same sort of story-niche for the focal characters. The Nazgul, gaunt, black-robed, powerful, terrifying, and inhuman, hunt the young Hobbits; just as the Dementors, gaunt, black-robed, powerful, terrifying, and inhuman, hunt the young wizarding children. For both groups, learning how to face their fears and overcome these shadowy horrors is part of growing up on their journey.
(For the record, I never saw the Nazgul as bunglers or stupid! They were too scary to analyse that way. What I saw, instead, was that seemingly insurmountable horrors could be overcome by courage and determination and sticking by your friends. That, and a good dose of Good Triumphing Over Evil, of course.)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 12:58 am (UTC)I think I needed to write the story that way because we get a pretty good look at Frodo's struggle, but in the end, he's saved by grace. I wanted to write that from the point of view of someone too proud to ever let grace anywhere near him.
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Date: 2007-09-09 10:26 pm (UTC)*refers you to her icon*
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Date: 2007-09-10 03:54 am (UTC)a. When he was chosen, of course. I was out of the country at the time, but I was following everything at the Internet cafes, and that made a great birthday present. He's such a terrific foil to Kerry--there's such a great Older Self/Younger Self dynamic at work there. And he's got a wicked smile.
b. He has such passion about compassion.
c. A potential for a sort of 'ends justify the means' ruthlessness.
d. Fairly difficult - until I tap into my own potential for great audacity and ambition, and then I can see a little more where he's coming from, especially in the zest for living that comes out of experiencing tragedy. And he can snark, too.
e. Probably "Democracy" - there's a latent action-hero in him, somewhere. And it's where he got the most chance to really say, "Bring it on, shitweasel!"
f. They're tentative, but they're there. I've been wondering if it would be even possible to finish "Democracy" three years on from the events. And just how much more difficult that AU would be.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 12:51 am (UTC)a. The way you play her, she's developed an intense quality that really expands on what was already there; she's introspective sometimes, but determined not to be drawn into bitterness in her grief, and that's very interesting. Her friendship with John is touching also (and I'd love to take a crack at writing him someday), and the whole subplot with her child, a ray of powerful fear and hope. And I just like her.
b. Generosity. ;)
c. Demandingness - a possibility of being, as an ex of mine used to say, a "high-maintenance broad."
d. Neither easy nor difficult, at that point - circumstances rather dictated her actions. But I loved writing the sensitivity her flirtatiousness had in that case.
e. "True love is no longer her concern; that has passed away for her. Pleasure still is her realm, though, and sharing it with friends is no small comfort." No longer tied to Hell, sex no longer has any necessary relationship to sin or damnation. It's a pretty powerful liberation.
f. None at the moment, but I look forward to lots of conversations and adventures with her. :D
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 03:01 am (UTC)a. That's really interesting, because the way I see it, she is bitter; terribly so about some things. But she's been coping with bitterness since she Fell, so she knows how to compartmentalize it and not let it cripple her in the here and now: hating angels in general but able to respond to Azi's genuine kindness, for example.
I absolutely hated how they handled her relationship with John in the comic in later issues. Actually I think half the reason I play John in this game is to fix stuff that the Hellblazer writers have bollocksed up. XD
b. *Snerks* Well, that's all in how you view it, now isn't it? One might just as easily accuse her of greed. ;)
c. Heh, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but yeah. I think a part of that as it's manifested in the game is due to one whopper of a thwarted maternal instinct. She's usually at her most forceful and decisive when she perceives that somebody (who she has reason to give a rat's ass about) needs her help. She also has no respect whatsoever for anybody's personal space, unless she's afraid of them or happens to be consciously trying, but that stems more from her profession than anything else...
d. I think Aziraphale's relationship with Crowley is one of the few that Ellie would genuinely feel bad about damaging, and will go out of her way to avoid doing so (and watch out...she may eventually get frustrated with them both for acting like blockheads and start plotting to get them back together! XD)
e. I agree. You hit the nail right on the head there, and also with the bit about "She loves them both. She wants them both dead, because neither should have to go through eternity without the other." That desire to see them succeed where she and Tali failed (as friends if nothing else) is...well, it's what originally got John involved in the whole situation, and it's one of the few genuinely hopeful things Ellie's got in her life these days. (She's trying not to hope too much about the kid, though it's very nearly too late.)
f. Me too. :D But you're always welcome to borrow her if a plot bunny demands it. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 01:16 am (UTC)I think sleep deprivation and too much philosophy reading combined to make me confuse you with tyellas. Sorry about that.
I've looked over your stuff at HASA to make sure I'm remembering authors correctly, and I think my two favorite LOTR fics both involve Merry, so I'll ask for him. Of course, if you'd rather, I'll be glad to hear any Tolkien character of your choosing.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 04:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 04:57 am (UTC)I'm off to bed, but I'll reply to your post tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 10:47 pm (UTC)Merry it is.
a. I think Merry's journey is probably the most underrated of all the hobbits', because he seems to change the least. That might be true, but it's great to see him grow into what he was always meant to be: a heroic leader on a small, homey scale. Which is exactly what he's always wanted to be.
b. Courage, but also judgment.
c. A tendency to think he knows more than he does.
d. Fairly difficult unless there are dramatic circumstances around for him to respond to, which is usually how I've written him. Then his matter-of-factness just kicks right in, and I remember how to swim.
e. That's probably "Pursuit of the Last Lantern," because he's away from Pippin and so doesn't have anyone very familiar to bounce off - among Rohirrim, different true colors than usual came out.
f. That all depends on the bunnies, now, doesn't it. ;P
no subject
Date: 2007-09-10 02:54 am (UTC)AND...GO!! ^_^<3
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Date: 2007-09-10 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 03:05 am (UTC)a. My interest in him as a historical character of fascination goes all the way back to my earliest Paganism student days, when my occult-geek teacher and best friend was very interested in him. It also has a lot to do with his role as a character in the Aegypt series by his and my beloved John Crowley (no relation, one presumes.;) It's worth noting that the work of Aleister Crowley wouldn't have been possible without Dee's work either.) He just never stops being interesting. And since he was Britain's premier practitioner of Practical Angelology, I was frankly appalled that he'd never appeared in a GO fic before!
b. Insatiable curiosity.
c. Insatiable curiosity.
d. Writing him was much easier than researching him. Researching him involves reading a lot of his magical diaries--written in a sort of Elizabethan occultist shorthand! There's a sort of wry, bemused quality that comes through even then.
e. "At any rate, I have come to believe that our Creator would not have put this complicated Glory into such systems and processes, and given us the desire to understand it all, were there not ways for a righteous petitioner to know. And I have devoted my life to collecting and understanding the works of all those who had glimpses and insights, and I do believe a pathway has been laid for us to ask…”
“Well, I would certainly never discourage prayer…” Aziraphale said, a bit woodenly.
“Yes, that’s what I mean – but a more scientific and properly focused prayer, using methods I think I’ve—“
“Beware,” Aziraphale said wearily, unable to keep a certain tone from creeping automatically into his voice.
“Risky, yes, but we would never know the New World were it not for brave sailors and wise mapmakers—“
“Yes, your friend Mercator did wonderful work with the—“ Aziraphale flailed
“I’m making an analogy.” John sighed, obviously thinking that for all his learning, his fellow bibliophile could be rather dense.
“I’m trying to change the subject!” Aziraphale snapped.
“And I won’t have it changed!” John shouted. “This is important to me.”
Aziraphale crossed his fingers behind his back in the last-ditch hope that John wasn’t going to say what he knew perfectly well John was going to say.
“I seek to ask my questions more directly,” John finally did say. “I have learned of a book, from the Ethiopians, on what little is known of the lost language before Babel. I believe it is possible to make sure I contact only the messengers of God and not less wholesome spirits.”
Aziraphale closed his eyes and prayed for strength. For all his learning, his fellow bibliophile could be awfully dense. “You want to talk with angels.”
“It sounds preposterous, I know…even blasphemous. But—“
“Well, I don’t suppose it’s impossible…” Aziraphale sighed."
That's my Dee - book-brilliant and reality-challenged. Prone to wander off in what he thinks is the right direction, yet is so flawlessly, utterly wrong--and yet, ineffably, sneaks up on the right answer through the back door.
f. Oh, who knows? I thought I was done. But I've been wrong before.
If I may . . .
Date: 2007-10-23 04:06 am (UTC)