Character meme!

[vulgarweed]

It'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.

Comments

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

Um. Okay: the Witchking of Angmar. (You must have good reasons, thought I really can't imagine them without your help.) ;D

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Oooh, good one.

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. :)

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

Fascinating, thank you!

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 ....) ;]

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

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)

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

Stories (read or visual) become too real to me for me to enjoy the terror -- I'm the sort that can wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares generated by books and movies. And I really hate that. ;P

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.)

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I think the main source of fascination with them for me is the very fact that they were once human. One way or another, whether they thought it through or not, they chose to become what they are. At least, they chose to give Sauron and his Rings the time of day, and sealed their own fates. So there's something of the horror within as well as the external factor. Could anyone have been seduced with the right appeal? Could I? The premise in TR&TC is that the reason the Witch-king is "more equal than the others" is that he was the only one who fully understood the ramifications of Sauron's "gift" and wanted it anyway. Or wanted it because of what he knew. Even Sauron was impressed with what a nasty piece of work he was to begin with. :D

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.