| character change |
[Feb. 2nd, 2010|12:59 am] |
No good character is static. Something about them has to change. To prevent Aeon from becoming a shallow archetype around which Aeder repents, he needs to grow up, too. I have some hints of this, but nothing really planned out.
I'm thinking his main problem is that he's too much of a caretaker, and too much of an escapist. He's anti-ambitious, giving to the point of self-sabotage. This starts off, obviously, centered around Aeder. He lets things like this build and build until they snap. Eloping with Lisbet is the first self-interested thing he's ever done in his life. But he hasn't learned how to live in balance. Staying undercover at Whitford, where he is so grossly overqualified, is another manifestation of his habitual self-effacing. He takes estrangement and the smallest allotments in life because he is afraid to deal with upturning his servile relationship with Aeder. He cannot bear to think he'd have to publicly accuse his idol of murder, even though it's true. He has trouble thinking of himself as important enough to deserve justice, especially at Aeder's expense. Instead he replaces Aeder with Lisbet in his heart and spends the next two years doting on her hand and foot, living to be rewarded by her pleasure. He blinds himself willingly to his unresolved injuries and keeps stuffing the wounds with assurances that he is making Lisbet happy.
He is also avoidant - he never lives up to his potential because the immensity of an undertaking like straightening out the tatters of his life and relationship in the North intimidates him. It just seems like such an overwhelming mess to deal with, not because of any specific work, but because of the emotional baggage. He doesn't want to have to risk facing emotions that are easier buried; the one time he did he got in a spectacularly humiliating public brawl on the steps of the High Temple at Umbrae. He doesn't trust how he might react to emotional pain, so he avoids it. This is the same reason he wanders after Whitford falls instead of raising troops to retake it. It would've been a theoretically simple matter for him to approach his eldest brother, Aeron, and borrow a spare regiment or two of dragonmen. The only problem is then he'd have to explain why he'd been avoiding everyone. With Ae'llewyn troops at his disposal he'd have had little trouble retaking a tiny baronetcy. Having failed to positively identify a body as his after the sack of Whitford, the paranoid river lords lived in fear for a good two years that they'd wake up one morning to an endless sea of white dragon banners on the horizon. When none appeared they begun, logically, to assume Aeon dead. He probably would've returned, suicidally, to the battle that night if he hadn't had Rowan to take care of. Rowan replaces Aeder, and Lisbet, as the central purpose of Aeon's world. Every desperate measure he takes to earn his daily bread in those five years, he does for Rowan, until he realizes that in his selfishness and shortsightedness he's been denying Rowan a proper lord's upbringing, education and martial training and the chance to be socialized with others of his own rank, not to mention the connections and placement that would determine his future. Ironically, what brings him back to Umbrae is not justice and forgiveness for himself and his own past, but convincing himself he must do it for Rowan's sake.
I think where he needs to go as a character is learning to face up to messy emotions. That's the hole in the black knight that needs to be resolved; a fearless physical fighter who is terrified to talk to his brother because it will hurt. He also needs to learn to do things for his own sake. I think he needs to realize that sometimes that is the best thing he can do for other people he cares about - those other people want to be good to him but have no idea what he wants or needs because he never articulates it. Aeder behaved like a spoiled child because Aeon spoiled him - he was accustomed to Aeon never wanting anything, giving him everything, because that really is what Aeon always did. Aeder is deeply humiliated to perceive his own maltreatment of Aeon but does not know how to fix it. He does not know how to undo and reverse the way they have always interacted. He is used to being aggressive and entitled and doesn't know how to behave otherwise in practice even if he wants to in theory. He would do anything for his brother to show how sorry he is - but he has no idea what to do. And as of when they are first reunited in the second book, Aeon still hasn't learned to ask for what he needs.
This is where I think the third book needs to go. I had some smatterings of an idea about introducing the daughter of Duke San Martyn as a character in the second book; I think now it brings the final large political piece into play. Aeon has to finally get something good for himself - keywords: for himself. It may benefit any number of other people - it does - but it has to be originally done for himself. I don't think he can ever be a selfish character, per se, but he perhaps makes everyone around him happy by finally admitting to something he wants. This also gives me a chance to totally upset the political landscape - I really have to figure out who the boy king in question is and who is going to wind up in control of what. |
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| i will kock your socks off! |
[Jan. 27th, 2010|06:43 pm] |
swear to god, i ought to change my journal heading to that.
Anyway: another passage added to the beginning of the main story. this has been in note form for too long. im kinda very pleased it's done.
Mikey
Then there was Roxie.
Roxanna was generally a pain in my ass, but she was really more than I could ever have reasonably hoped for. Hell, if I was to believe the kids I grew up with, having a girlfriend at all was generally more than someone like me could hope for. The concept of our relationship was my shield, and I was hers. They would call us fat, or stupid, or nerdy, and we could just laugh at them because most of them didn’t even have boyfriends and girlfriends, much less having the kinds of crazy sex we had all the time. Roxie was a really kinky girl. If you can name it, she was into it. I don’t even know how she hid all those dildos. I kept telling our housekeeper not to come into my room, but she would generally never listen until the day she found the trunk of toys under my bed. Oh well. She had to learn sometime. I think she told my father because he kinda gave me this vague eyebrow-raised look that night and asked me if I always used condoms. I replied that of course I did, and he never mentioned it again.
The sex was generally good in it’s own right, of course, but I don’t know if it would’ve been worth dating a generally crazy girl on it’s own. The biggest thing was that she gave me a way to be who I wanted to be. I always have wanted to be chivalrous and heroic, like a literary knight, or my grandfather. My grandfather was amazing. He’d always make the most spectacular gestures. He was successful – practically famous as a scientist – which is generally pretty impressive for a jew who survived the second world war. And my grandmother was so utterly in love with him until the day she died. He would hold open doors for her, bring her flowers all the time. It was ridiculous. When I get old I want to be like him. I want to someone to love me the way she loved him, this sort of mindless, happy, perfect way. I have always tried to be like he would be, generally spectacular and grand and chivalrous. Roxie gave me someone to do that for
A week or so after we started dating, I discovered she liked yellow starburst. Just the yellow ones. No one likes the yellow ones. She would buy a pack and just eat the yellows. She was always sad that there were only three, and the rest was just a waste. So I started saving them for her. Every time I vaguely saw anyone eating starburst I would ask them for the yellow ones. People started vaguely remembering and giving me handfuls now and again throughout the day. I saved up a ton of them over the whole summer and into the beginning of the school year, until it was just about the time when people ask people to homecoming.
Around here, homecoming was always generally this big thing. People always make this big fancy show of asking other people and it’s really significant and everyone generally knows who went with whom. A girl like Roxie would never have expected to be asked to homecoming, much less in a big showy way. That was only for skinny girls, for popular girls. I was determined to show them all. So one Friday I snuck the all the starbursts to school – they filled a whole trash bag to just about bursting; I had to double-bag it so it wouldn’t rip. It had taken me a bit of thinking to figure out how to fill her locker with them – basically I had to make this really tall, narrow wedge to go all around the side and bottom of the door, and stand on a chair and pour them in slowly through the crack at the top. It took me all of fifth period. People kept staring. Some escaped when I had to pull the wedge out and shut the door really quickly. I just barely got it cleaned up and ran around the corner to hide when the bell rang.
Students started pouring out of everywhere. I knew her fifth period class was upstairs, and that she’d come down the stairs and not see me around the corner. The hall was absolutely full when she opened her locker and the yellow starbursts came pouring out. I’d pinned the note inside the door just generally high enough that she could see it, and so could everyone in the hall. “So you never run out.” She was standing there in shock and then there I was tapping her on the shoulder. I went down on one knee and presented her with a rose and asked her to homecoming with me. She started crying and saying yes and everyone in the hall started cheering for us.
It was probably the best moment of my life. |
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| a new segment of an old story |
[Jan. 26th, 2010|03:25 am] |
I just added a fully new segement, from Brendan's point of view, to my main story project.
Brendan
so eigth grade was when pretty much decided that i;m never going to try to be nice to a girl ever again., there was this girl in my homeroom class that was SO FUCKING HOT. i mean my balls had hardly even dropped then and I knew she was SO FREAKING HOT it was amazing., she was just like SUPER nice and she had these little perfect boobies for an eigth grader and this like PERFECT smile. So I finally got up the balls one day to ask her out and 7ou know how it goes when your in jr high and all, you have to do this big fancy special secret note-passing thing, and make a big thing of it, and like everyone in the room is going to look at you amd go awwwww and cheer if she says yes.
So I made her this multiple choice note like the giant nerd I am that said in big block letters “WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME?” and under it two checkboxes, one for :”Yes” and one for “No.” i thought about it and i figured I should say something extra, like, that she would like, so I wrote on the bottom “Your pretty.” And then i thought about it and figured it was like with how male birds build this big huge nest in mating season and do this whole huge dance ritual thing that I should probably say something to impress her so I added, “I will knock your socks off.”
well apperantly I cant spell. I mean like I couldn’t spell then even more than I could now because when I got up the nerve and finally gave it to her in front of the whole class and backed off all nervous and waiting, she just read it and then she started GIGGLING, and then all of her friends started giggling too!! I was like what the fuck??! holy shit what did I do wrong why are they all laughing at me??!!!! no one would tell me anything for like TEN MINUTES and then finally someone said “COCK!! you said cock!!” out loud, like voice still shaking from laughing so hard. apperantly I had written “I will kock your socks off.”
she never answered me but every time she and her friends saw me for the rest of the year they would just start giggling all over again. |
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| so here's the bits and peices of formula |
[Jan. 25th, 2010|04:35 pm] |
I started out by developing a character that amused me to think about. Ideas about aspect of his life, interrelated characters, and thing in the world have since then been fractal. Combining advice on worldbuilding from the lengthy and somewhat condescending preface of David Edding's "The Rivan Codex" and my bible, Lajos Egri's "The Art of Dramatic Writing", I think I want to flesh out this whole huge universe in detail, and then put it inside a tiny head find where in the mass of information to start, and where to end, to avoid irrelevant blather and follow just the tightest dramatic story-arc of greatest interest value. It easier (such as with my other main work) to go at my real life and experience with a giant meat cleaver in search of choice bits, because in the reality with which I am familiar, the details are all there already. But right now the challenge I have with this world is building a rich enough backdrop of potential.
So for now, although I have the rudimentary ideas of which plot-arc I want to follow, I'm going to abandon the goal of making concise choices. Let the idea bounce off and develop tangentially in any direction - it just makes more to draw the two hour's traffic of my stage from later.
( Let us start with the physical world. ) |
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| some notes on Aeon and Aeder |
[Jan. 24th, 2010|10:01 pm] |
Partly I'm just thinking out loud here, but I would like feedback if you'd care to give it.
Aeon and Aeder Ae'llewyn are two of the main characters of a side project work of mine. Aeon is the protagonist of the whole thing, Aeder is a painfully beloved antagonist. This is a classic pseudo-mid eval high fantasy piece, and they are the fifth (Aeder) and sixth (Aeon) sons of Old Baron Ae'llewyn. They are less than a year apart and frequently mistaken for twins. I've sketched out the idea that they were exceptionally close as children, accustomed to sharing and nigh on inseparable.
( so here's some more notes on how i want to develop that thought. ) |
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| we can be taught |
[Dec. 27th, 2009|04:48 am] |
little by little, we learn to defeat our bad habits.
i have a bad habit of bitching about shit that i could just say.
mel has a bad habit of overreacting to shit that she thinks i'm about to say.
she did something incredibly ditzy earlier today that kind of really annoys me. when she's thinking about something that interests her, she absolutely ceases to notice the world around her. i asked her to change the water filter cartridge on the sink while she was already doing dishes. she was busily gabbing with a friend on the phone, and after a cursory glance around, replied that there were no more filters. suspicious, because i could've sworn i just bought a box a few weeks ago, but whatever, i was on my way out the door. so i just asked if she could please pick up another box today, since i worked a double and all she had was 2 hours of class. she said sure - and got too busy hanging out with friends before and after class to do it.
14 hours later i get home. and open the ONE cabinet that holds shit like trash bags and filter cartridges. oh look! the rest of the box that I bought the other week!
once upon a time, i would've bitched her out for stupidity and laziness.
i pictured the tedious 5 hour fight that would ensue.
instead, i casually said, "hey babe, i found some more filters. they were behind the trash bags."
instead of getting defensive and screaming and crying, she jumped up. "Oh, good. i'll change it now. i'm sorry, i should've actually looked behind stuff. sorry baby."
and that was IT. end of discussion, filter changed, apology and recognition of her own fault, and no 5 hour bitchfight.
sometimes, we can learn. |
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| girlfriend |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|08:14 pm] |
it becomes a problem when people expect you to become your own stereotype.
now, i've been a seriously immature asshat at some points in my life.
keywords: at some points in my life.
am i not supposed to try to get better? am i never supposed to grow and change? is it so goddamn unbelievable that even stupid boys like me might learn from our mistakes every once in a while?
mel and i got in a weird semi-argument last night. basically, i spoke carelessly, she misinterpreted me, and things blew up. now, the frustrating part is this: we sorted through the actual misunderstanding, twice, but she's STILL not over it. We figured out the misunderstanding last night within like ten minutes, and she said that while she got it she was still residually feeling miffed and so she was gonna go lay on the couch awhile. Okay, I let her, she came back to bed a few hours later and cuddled and whatev. Today she texted me that she was still feeling unsatisfied about last night and could we talk? Okay, points to her for being so straightforward and constructive.
So we talked. She doesn't rationally blame me for any of it. She doesn't rationally think I was being an asshole, she admits that she overreacted. She's said she "fully accepts" that I just said something perfectly natural for me, and she reacted the way that was natural for her, and that it was just an unfortunate combination, shared blame. But she also says she feels like I "set her up" for the misunderstanding to happen, so I could disprove it, pull the rug of her righteousness out from under her, and leave her all pissed off with no good reason to be.
What the FUCK?
I asked her "do you seriously think I set this whole thing up?" and she immediately said, no no, rationally, she knows it was all an accident etc, back over the same loop of logic and nonlogic. She KNOWS, and says repeatedly, that it wasn't my fault. But she's still dissatisfied somehow. What does she want me to do about it? Well, apologize for what I did. But didn't you just say I didn't do anything? Yes, I know rationally that you didn't do anything but I'm EMOTIONALLY still dissatisfied.
What the FUCK?!
She emotionally, habitually still expects me to be an asshole all the time. She has a once-bitten-twice-shy overreaction to imagined assholish behaviors. But there is a difference between "shy" and "neurotically paranoid." Misunderstanding something I said? That is reasonable for someone who's twice shy. Refusing to believe that I'm sorry after I've apologized repeatedly and she's figured out how the misunderstanding happened? That's neurotic and paranoid.
Jesus fuck. |
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| you'd think I'd be used to it by now... |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|01:57 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  annoyed | ] |
but I still hate nosebleeds. every single time.
its the goddamn dry winter air that does it. well, its the nonexistant inside of my nose that makes me prone to it, but dry air sets it off. I scared the crap out of my girlfriend this morning, waking up with a bloody nose all over the place and too annoyed to say anything nicer than "calm down, wouldja?" I think it annoys me so much because I've gotten un-used to it. I've been clean of anything harder for eight years now, and I don't compete seriously anymore and thus don't get kicked in the face much these days. I actually get used to not tasting blood as a post-nasal drip, god forbid. then that first too-cold-to-snow snap hits (chicago is a wonderful mess of just-above-freezing sleet and slush most of the winter,) all the moisture comes out of the air, and voila, jerry is a bloody mess.
graalllgh grumble grumble. |
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| questions of address |
[Dec. 8th, 2009|11:52 pm] |
so, i have three ranks of nobility in my story. landowners, conquering landowners who have vassal landowners, and a central conquering king above that. you could call them lords, overlords, and king. or lords, great lords, and king. or lordlings, lord, and king. or barons, dukes and king. or baronets, barons and king. or lords, kings, and emperors. get the idea? I'm trying to pick a set of three levels of title that has a clear implication of who is above whom.
linking me to the wiki on the historical titling system of england or france is NOT helpful. i already know that. the point is that most people don't. offhand, a normal american reader doesn't remember if an earl is higher than a count or a duke or a baron or a marquis or a viscount or a whatever. i'm trying to pick of set of words that is pretty clear to most people right off the bat, without making them have to go look it up.
opinions? |
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| this |
[Dec. 6th, 2009|07:43 am] |
in the last 9 hours since I've eaten, the latter 3+ of those were spent working out.
I was so goddamn hungry when I got home I dug into the giant kiesh? Keesh? keisch? queech? queish? whatever the fuck those are called - that my roommates had left on the kitchen counter. i think it had bacon in it.
i should mention, i'm usually vegan, and definitely vegetarian. and whatever-the-fuck-those-are-calleds are made of a shit ton of eggs poured over various junk and baked. i am probably going to have to wake up to puke in an hour, but my body is fucking thrilled at the protien right now. i was smart enough to switch to almonds for the most part, but i'm fucking out of soy protien of all forms, and a handful of almonds is super-unsatisfying. i kept sneaking extra bites of queeiche or whatever. sneaking. as if someone was fucking awake besides me. i usually fucking hate eggs. and it was *so good.*n hunger, thou art the best seasoning.
very yes.
http://xkcd.com/189/
blugh. it might have even had some cheese in it. i think im going to try and pass out soundlky enough to not notice the sick now. night. |
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| "nobody likes me..." |
[Dec. 5th, 2009|02:10 am] |
"...everybody hates me, guess i'll go eat worms."
I mean, I know I sometimes go a month between posts, but the utter lack of love on my last couple is a bit ridiculous.
Anyway.
So I was thinking some more about plot devices I could use. Many classics I could pillage. Was considering making Rowan Aeder's son, conceived while Aeon was presumed dead. Not sure this could be played to it's full dramatic potential, however, with Lisbet out of the game so early. Also, Aeon's kind of lost enough already for significant dramatic motivation. It's Aeder that needs more purpose.
Thoughts? |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|08:09 am] |
Hey guys - I have most of a plot and i want suggestions for ways to have it end. Following is a summary.
( This is a more organized apporach to Aeon Ae'llewyn )
And this is as far as I've gotten.
So my question now has to do with how this is going to end. I think Aeon needs to end up across the battlefield from Aeder, this time trapped by duty and crossed loyalties. I think Aeder needs to be an unmitigated ass one more time, probably maiming or killing Aeon. He needs to be utterly haunted by it, and then redeem himself with something self sacrificing, such as dying to save Rowan.
Thoughts? |
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| if that silly boy can do it, so can i. |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|02:05 am] |
well, you said to get a little more up close and personal. so i did.
the pacing of this story from start to finish is NOT consistent, btw. segment one started out as sketching a ridiculous high fantasy character at work. it.s a bit of an odd place to begin a story. segments two and three i sketched in the background of his life - how he got to be that way. they are particularly epic, if highly over-concentrated. i like their contents very much, but they need to be expanded into multiple chapters each. they are VERY brief at present. now, due to response, ive started actually fleshing out scenes. im not 100% decided on exactly which part of this story arc to focus on and declare the primary one, and that's something i'd really like feedback on.
last few segments
one. meet aeon ae'llewyn. highborn but lastborn, penniless, landless, widowed with a young son. so he set the boy before him on his horse and set off to sell his sword.
two. aeon and aeder. the youngest sons of old baron ae'llewyn. not really twins, but close enough they could speak in it. their childhood and relationship could be a whole book.
three. aeon and lisbet, the girl aeder tried to kill him over, the girl aeon forfeited rank and family to marry. this is the poingant end of their story arc. the implied history could definately be told.
four. aeon and his son rowan. and why they have no home.
( five. aeon swallows his pride to do what is best for rowan, even if that means facing aeder. ) |
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