Character Writing #5

… I’m not doing these in order. These are supposed to be #28 and #21 of the 30 questions (a few of which I’m not doing at all)

If your character’s life was a genre, what would it be? (I’m thinking of this as from their POV)

  • Wild Rush – action, probably with lots of explosions. Maybe action comedy
  • Daisy – romance or romcom
  • Delia – probably a sitcom? Maybe?
  • Charles – action thriller
  • Andre – spy thriller
  • Techrat – horror
  • Swordcat – live stream webcam (… that’s probably a copout :P )

Does your character have a symbol or would they pick a symbol?

The one’s that actually have a symbol:

  • Delia – white knight (chess piece type)
  • Wild Rush – cards
  • Daisy – two hearts
  • Techrat – barcode
  • Mask – his mask, obviously :P
  • Joel Burton – a black rook (chess piece)
  • I swear Gimmick has one, but I can’t think of it
  • Jill – a ferret’s bandit mask
  • (there are a bunch more – pretty much all the Name Criminals have one, as you might expect)

The one’s that don’t:

  • Andre – hibiscus flower, like off a Hawaiian shirt
  • Charles – a bullet casing, I think
  • Mick Adler – a battery

 

 


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Character Writing – Mini #1

I felt like talking about a few other people’s sexual orientations.

– Techrat: sex-repulsed. If he didn’t find contact with people and, basically the human body, viscerally disgusting, he’d be straight and allosexual (non-asexual). As it is, he’s celibate and almost libido-less. (He’s got serious mental problems that would probably respond better to therapy and drugs if he didn’t think he knew better than the doctors and was actually compliant. But nothing is going to get rid of it entirely).

– Swordcat: straight, but to a species of space cat people that haven’t existed for millions of years. You can imagine what this does to his love life. Before he got turned into a cat person, he was straight, in a normal way. He’s got a daughter and ex-wife that he gets along better with now that he’s a cat person (he was a jerk; now he’s a lazy tom cat).

 

(I need to write more people who have serious problems that aren’t criminals. A lot of the criminals with problems – like Techrat – aren’t bad people and I have criminals that don’t have serious mental conditions, like Mask – who also isn’t really a bad person. But. I still need to have civilians and good people that have serious mental conditions that they struggle with.)

 

(And, unrelated to anything else in this post – I suspect at some point somebody is going to ask/think that Wild Rush is autistic. I’m going to say right now, no, he isn’t. Not because there’s anything wrong with being autistic, but because they deserve better than Wild Rush. I’m not writing him to represent any particular condition – I think borderline personality disorder is the closest, but even that doesn’t fit very well since he truly and deeply loves Daisy. He’s kind of a horrible person. He can be charming, he can be entertaining, but he’s very dangerous and his only truly redeeming quality is loving Daisy. Although he puts on a hell of a show.)

(About the only character that has no redeeming qualities at all is Tectrix. I’m writing him as that guy you love to hate. Silver Dollar is also pretty awful and Gimmick is completely self-absorbed.)


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Character Writing #4

I’m being lazy and only doing one question today.

 

(trigger warning – character death / murder / torture)

#7 – Is there an event in the character’s past they’d like to erase?

Delia – her husband being killed is the obvious one. Her brother dying in the war is another.

Wild Rush – basically his entire childhood outside of school

Daisy – her mom leaving

Charles – if he hadn’t met Wild Rush his life would probably be a lot more peaceful.

Andre – I can’t think of anything

(trigger warning – torture)

Mask – getting attacked by a rival gang, tied up, and lit on fire would be an obvious one…

 


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White Knight Art

Finished the reference sheet for White Knight. Yeah, Delia Troy Burton is under there. Also, my first image for the OCTP meme. Next is them holding hands.

I need to do a whole bunch of designs for Wild Rush’s clothes, because otherwise they all end up looking like this. (He wears solely shades of yellow, black, and red, but I could get a lot more patterns and such in there.)

And you get to see the White Knight logo. Like most comic book logos, the color changes to match the cover.

White-Knight-v4
The White Knight, reference sheet

WR&D
Wild Rush and Deuce of Hearts

 


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Character Writing #3

(Trigger warning: light misgendering, senility, food mentions, disability, scarring & tattoo talk, murder)

I’m adding three more characters. I’m also going to do the questions for Charles and Andre (I need to look up their last names, but it’s on the other computer) and then a random character that will probably change for each question.

Character’s relationship with parents:

Charles – (I haven’t decided pronouns, so for now I’m going to use zie/zir for zie) Zir parents were really conservative, but trying. They were fine with zem being gay, but confused by zem being non-binary. For years they assumed that meant zie wanted to be a girl and would buy zem typically female-assigned stuff. That was partly okay, because zie does like feminine stuff, but they overdid it. Zie’s got two sisters and their family didn’t have huge amounts of money. Zie gets along fine with all of zir family, although zie often finds zir parents tiring.

Andre – he was spoiled rotten and getting out on his own was a huge shock. His mom would do all his cleaning, food prep, etc, so he didn’t know how to do laundry, cook, etc. Charles thought that was funny and helped him learn when they were in college. His dad has gone senile and Andre finds visiting him very sad, but tries to go at least once a month. He has a younger brother that takes care of his parents (they’re in a nursing home) and he doesn’t approve of Andre’s career and won’t take any of his money. But they’re polite to each other, in a somewhat awkward, prickly way.

Joel Burton (okay, I’m giving myself an easy one :P ) – seeing as his parents have more than plenty of money, Joel’s got a fairly easy ride. Which makes dealing with his disability a lot better. (I can’t remember the name I gave the disease – it’s similar to Parkinson’s). His dad would spoil him and his mom was stricter, but overall it balanced out.

Most prominent feature:

Charles is huge. Like tall, massive, generally huge.

Andre is very classically good looking.

Techrat – his shaved head. Not like fuzzy shaved. Bald shaved. And not cuz he’s balding. Aside from that, probably the barcode tattooed on the back of his neck.

Scars:

Okay, so medical technology is more advanced than in our world, so people generally don’t get scars from surgeries, etc. People get the normal day to day scars, which can be removed easily if they want.

Charles has a puckered sort of scar on his right shoulder where zie got a tattoo removed. Zie was really young when zie got it and a friend did it with a homemade tattoo gun. Zie keeps the scar as a reminder that we all do stupid things sometimes.

Andre is one of the few people that the scar removal tech doesn’t work on. He’s got scars all over his chest and arms from the various fights he’s been in.

Delia would have a c-section scar if not for the technology.

Gimmick has heavy calluses behind his ears from the hearing aids he wears (of his own design). He’s also got a faint white mark on his left shoulder that is all that remains of the surgery scar when he got his rotator cuff repaired.

How vain:

Charles thinks zie’s pretty good looking, but zie’s not vain about it.

Andre loves to primp, but he keeps it private (cuz Wild Rush is a lot more vain than he is and will throw a tantrum.)

Techrat absolutely hates how he looks. But he has serious issues, in that he wishes he was a machine.

Sexual Orientation and history:

Charles just loves the dudes.

Andre is closer to being bi than gay, but identifies as gay. He’s slept with people of all types, but is only romantically attracted to men.

Leonard Burton (Delia’s brother-in-law) loves the ladies. He’s aromantic and just wants sex and to spoil his (current) girlfriend. He stays really good friends with past girlfriends, in a completely healthy way (he’s not a nice guy™, he’s actually a really nice, giving guy, who just likes to sleep around).

How easily does your character make friends? Are they well liked?

Charles makes friends pretty well, but drops them quickly too if they say anything even remotely bigoted.

Andre is more forgiving, but has a harder time making close friends. He has a huge number of acquaintances who think they’re closer than they are.

Gimmick doesn’t really make friends. He’s got a giant ego that doesn’t make room for anyone else. One of his closest friends is Techrat, because they share a love for technology.

Techrat also doesn’t make friends, but that’s because he finds people disgusting and annoying.

Describe your character’s happiest memory

Ugh, I hate questions like this. Either you get cliche answers (when they met their spouse, when they got married, when they had their kid…) or you get spoilers.

Delia: One of those cliches. She was deeply in love with her husband. Probably also when the company she worked for (that she co-founded with friends) took off after all their hard work.

(Trigger warning: murder)

Wild Rush: probably the one he values most is when he killed his parents, although probably falling in love with Daisy is happier.

(end trigger warning)

Daisy: learning to drive, falling in love. I dunno.

Charles: meeting other non-binary people for the first time.

Andre: graduating college

Gimmick: when he got his first hearing aids and then when he made better ones (the money he makes off the patent doesn’t hurt any either)


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White Knight notes for later

This is mostly a note to myself and lots of rambling.

I want to revamp my character diversity – I have a huge number of characters, but there are a lot of diversity categories not represented or poorly represented (like, there are a lot of Asian characters, but very few black people…) (I don’t know what the breakdown of ethnicities actually is, that’s just an example). My plan is to basically use random numbers to fix this (I already use a random generator to determine relative weights, heights, and some other things).

Percentages I’m going to use: (I’m intentionally inflating numbers to increase representation)

  • Intersex: 1%
  • Transgender (binary): 4%
  • Non-binary: 15% (I truly believe that a lot more people would be non-binary if it was more widely known and accepted – which it is in my story) (I’ve decided Delia is a demi-girl, and one of Wild Rush’s henchmen is going to be non-binary)
  • Neurodivergent: ???
  • Invisibly disabled: ???
  • Disabled: ???
  • Race categories… (gonna get the statistics for the US and round up)
  • I’m not sure what else?

Plan for the generator:

Have list of categories, with what numbers mean the character fits in that category. For example, race/ethnicity* could be White, Native American, Black, South Asian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, East Asian, etc, and by having a list people could easily be more than one ethnicity.

Like any generator, results will probably be tweaked by hand.

* obviously for this, I’d use the words that fit my actual map, since there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between my fictional world and the real world.

Diverse characters I know I have:

  • Lt. Aurita – cop, black / Pacific Islander,  Caling, an ethnic group that whose average height is under 4 feet Pygmy (I can’t tell from googling if this is an offensive term or if there’s alternatives – she’s not a little person, because she doesn’t have dwarfism, she’s ethnically a Pygmy) (Seriously, if I’m screwing up here, let me know). (Edited 4-27-14)
  • Mask – Middle Eastern, disabled (I need some Middle Eastern characters that aren’t criminals – don’t judge me for that, the majority of my characters are criminals.)
  • Delia Troy Burton – Asian, demi-girl
  • Joel Burton (Delia’s son) – Asian, disabled (fictional disease similar to Parkison’s)
  • Emily – Latina, Selective Mutism (I’m not sure if that’s neurodivergent, disabled, or both…)
  • Charles – (Wild Rush’s henchman) gay, non-binary
  • Andre – (Wild Rush’s henchman) gay
  • RV – black
  • (Since Ostanes is set in the same universe, I can count Iosis & Ostanes and their mom for Asian, and Dr. Maurell for asexual and Latino) (basically I already diversitied-up that story, so I’m not worrying about it)
  • (I really need some more asexual characters)
  • (I swear there’s more, I just can’t think of them right now)

Characters that I’m not counting as diverse:

  • Swordcat – multiple, through alien intervention (I need some naturally multiple people)
  • Wild Rush – neurodivergent, mostly likely diagnosis is sociopath (it’s more complicated than that and I don’t want to try to count him as representation of anybody because he’s a really terrible person)
  • Tectrix (I think that’s what I’m going to call him) – Middle Eastern (although that might change. He’s currently problematic and I’m trying to figure out how much of that is stuff I need to change about him and how much can be fixed by having other characters as counterweight) (He’s really just kind of a horrible person and I might just make him white, because making white people horrible doesn’t say anything bad about white people.)

I swear I almost should just make all the really horrible people white, because I’m totally racist against my own race. (That’s mostly sarcasm). (Anyone who non-ironically mentions ‘reverse racism’ will get laughed at and banned. Not kidding.)


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Character Writing #2

(Trigger Warning: child abuse, character murder. Will mark where it stops and starts)

Let’s start with some basic stats:

Delia Troy Burton

Age: 40s
Height: Tall for a dfab person
Build: muscular
Hair: Black, straight, short
Eyes: Soft Brown
Skin: medium toned
Ethnicity: Zanchian-Anitian (Chinese-American-ish. Again, fictional world.)
Job: Chief Financial Officer (I think) at place that I can’t remember the name of. It’s a technology company.

Wild Rush Age: 40s (I think)
Height: Very tall
Build: Skinny
Hair: curly, dark reddish-brown, short
Eyes: Bright blue
Skin: Grey Ethnicity: European (I don’t remember what I’m calling that area)
Occupation: Criminal

Daisy Hart, aka Deuce of Hearts Age: 20s (at start of the story she’s 17)
Height: Average
Build: Curvy
Hair: Shoulder-length strawberry-blond, straight
Eyes: Amber Skin: Grey / pale pink
Ethnicity: European
Occupation: Student / Criminal

Name one (physical) scar your character has and where it came from: (I don’t even want to get started on emotional scars. I’d have to warn for all the things)

Delia: I haven’t really thought about it. Presumably she has some from playing sports (Lacrosse and Quoits*). Any she has won’t be major.

* Not the real one. Fictional sport.

(Trigger warning: child abuse)

Wild Rush: The grey skin is an obvious one. Aside from that, I know he’s got a scar on the back on one knee from getting hit by a belt buckle by his dad. He had a several broken bones as well. Pretty much everything has healed away to invisibility by now.

(end trigger warning)

Daisy: Again, I haven’t really thought about it. I can’t think of any that would be plot relevant (aside from the grey skin, which isn’t really a scar).

How vain is your character? Do they find themselves attractive?

Delia: She’s not vain, but she’s proud of her body. She likes how strong she is and she’s got a cute face.

Wild Rush: He’s exceedingly vain and generally obvious about it. Aside from finding himself good looking (he’s very tall and thin), he loves how talented he is at gambling, card games, and card tricks. He’s got some self-esteem issues and needs reassurances from people he cares about (mostly Daisy, also his two trusted henchmen).

Daisy: She’s not vain at all. She doesn’t think she’s attractive, but she’s quite cute. (She’s curvy and hippy, and has picked up the standard amounts of society-prescribed fat-hatred.)

What is your character’s ranking on the Kinsey Scale? (I’m going to interpret this as what is your character’s sexual orientation and history, because the Kinsey scale has some problems – it’s based on history, not on interest).

(trigger warning: death)

Delia: she’s pretty much entirely heterosexual. I think she had a normal array of boyfriends, although she was pretty focused on her career. When she met her husband, they feel head-over-heels in love and they were totally devoted to each other. Since he was killed she hasn’t dated at all. (I may have her date at some point, I haven’t decided).

(end trigger warning)

Wild Rush: He’s bisexual, or maybe bisexual and heteoromantic. Likes everybody that will give him attention. He had both boyfriends and girlfriends in high school. I’m pretty sure he briefly dated Jill (another Name Criminal). He’s very opposed to homophobia. He’s completely devoted to Daisy, but he’ll go to bars and get drunk and make out with guys. (Daisy knows and is okay with it). I can see him having a threesome with his two henchmen in the past. In fact, I *know* he’s at least gotten a blowjob from at least one of them, because they were bribing him to let them drive (he’s a scary driver. Good in the sense that he doesn’t hit anything, but scary.) He prefers to bottom (and top from the bottom) when with a guy.

Daisy: ummm? heteroflexible? Has only dated guys – dated a couple of guys in high school, then fell in love with Wild Rush.

I’m going to add one not from the list. How easily does your character make friends? Are they well liked?

Delia: fairly easily. The company she works for was founded by her and three of her (amab – I may make at least one of them non-binary) friends (One has left to do other things). I know she has at least two other good friends, RV at the animal rescue where she volunteers and Leonard, her brother-in-law. (… I should give her some close girl friends. I know there’s one that shows up asking why Delia hasn’t been out, but I can’t remember her name.) She goes to a lot of charity events and is well-liked.

Wild Rush: Not easily. He is superficially charming, but has a short temper. He’s scary and most of the other Name Criminals are scared of him. Aside from Daisy, his two closest friends are Charles and Andre, his henchmen. There are several other Name Criminals that he’ll hang out with when in prison, because they play poker. (Later he becomes friends with Delia.) He’s respected, but not liked.

Daisy: Everybody likes Daisy. She doesn’t have a lot of close friends though, but pretty much any of the other Name Criminals would help her out. She’s very sweet, charming, and likes to help people out.


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Character Writing #1

Copying this from Tumblr so they’ll all be in the same place.

I’m doing the Character Writing Challenge on Habit Rpg. I’m doing three characters. Wild Rush and Daisy Hart, who I’m also doing the OCTP meme for, and the main character, Delia Troy Burton.

(Trigger Warning: Child / Teenager Abuse.)

1) Character’s relationship with parents

(Skipping Delia and Wild Rush because I know theirs. I can’t remember the details of Delia’s – its in my notes. Wild Rush’s comes down to, he hates his family for pretty good reasons).

Daisy Hart / Deuce of Hearts: Her mom left when she was about seven. Her dad started sexually abusing her when she was 13. She ran away with Wild Rush when she was 17. Aside from that, her dad basically ignored her and did the minimum necessary. She has no idea where her mom is. Her dad is now dead (from a car crash).

(End Trigger Warning)

2) Most prominant physical feature:

Delia: Probably how strong she is. She’s very muscular from years of sports and martial arts. (I have in my notes which ones specifically. I think lacrosse and I know, another fictional First Nations* sport, as well as a fictional martial art). Physically I modeled her after some professional wrestlers.

Wild Rush: His grey skin. He was in an accident which interacted with some other stuff, and basically he’s got grey skin. Aside from that, his bright blue eyes.

Daisy: She usually also has grey skin (because of spoilery reasons). Aside from that, probably her amber eyes or her strawberry blonde hair.

* It’s set on a fictional world, but things kind of correspond. I don’t remember what I was calling them exactly. It’s in my notes.


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Nyjichun Culture Notes

A bunch of random things I wrote about the Nyjichun. Completely unedited, so rather rambling and full of notes to myself (in square brackets). To remind you all, the Nyjichun are the ‘race’ Wilykit and Wilykat and my oc, Felino, belong to. There are two major divisions of Nyjichun – the Taijin who are more of warriors and Wanrin who aren’t. Felino is Taijin. Wilykit and Wilykat are Wanrin. The Nyjichun grow slower than other Thunderians and are always shorter.

This is also in the Nyjichun tiddlywiki.

CN: funeral practices, extreme body modifications, racism of fantasy culture, specifically, mention of child theft,

Read more


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Daniel Loyd update

I still haven’t typed up that other vignette, no. But I’m working on an actual story for the characters now. And upcoming retcon alert – Roland is now Rowan, and is a woman. And we’re going to get physical descriptions of at least the siblings. So there’s that.

I still need to think of a name for the series. I’ve decided I don’t like Doll-verse, so I need something.


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Commenting Culture Here

I’m adapting this from silveradept because I know I often feel like I don’t have anything worthwhile to add on other blogs and it’s reasonable that others do too.

Any commentary that follows the comment policy is worthwhile (basics of the comment policy: don’t be a jerk). If you want to comment, do. If you don’t have the energy, don’t. You don’t have to agree with me and I assume good faith until proven otherwise.

I welcome any of the following types of comments on any of my posts:

  • very short comments, including single words (‘like’, ‘yes’, ‘agreed’, ‘flail’), punctuation marks (‘!!!’), +1, emoticons.
  • long, wordy comments. An essay or rambling is totally okay.
  • Comments and links on related topics.
  • Comments on single links, paragraphs or topics.
  • Sequential commentary. It’s okay to think of something else later and reply to yourself.
  • Discussion of other comments and with other commenters.
  • anonymous comments (on Dreamwidth. Comments at the main site require an email address).
  • comments from people who have never talked to me or that I’ve never met.
  • comments on old posts.
  • links to discussion of my posts on other sites.

How I reply:

  • I mostly reply to comments.
  • You’re never obligated to reply to my reply.

Linking to my entries:

  •  Go for it.
  •  I’d appreciate if you tell me where you linked, but it’s not required.

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CL logo

Where my stories come from

I generally prefer to call my stories that, instead of writing, because I don’t write the majority of them down, and even the ones that I decide I should, usually don’t get written immediately. (For example: my vampire mystery novel that might have to end up being a trilogy or getting a lot of stuff cut out.)

All my stories start as daydreams, generally when I’m laying in bed, but I’ve started stuff to keep me from falling asleep in class, when I was in the car, visiting family for the holidays, etc, whenever I have mental energy that isn’t getting used (which is often…). Most of the stories start with me using the names and characters of whatever I’m currently obsessing with. The characters will get stretched and molded to fit wherever my mind roams. I also have character types of my own creation that show up under a variety of names.

A lot of my imaginings are blatant Mary Sues, interacting with my favorite characters. My most current one, who I’ve been using in more or less the same form since I graduated high school (so thirteen years now) is a fire mage who can do anything she can imagine in fire terms, including shape changing and traveling between worlds and into stories. She beats up demons, monsters, and the occasional god. And runs a school for other superheroes, including recruiting a young version of the Phantom of the Opera. Like I said, blatant Mary Sue. Incredibly blatant. Which is why I’ve completely discarded the notion of ever recording those stories (just getting rid of the copyright infringements would… well, basically remove most of it, honestly, and it’s too much of a massive crossover for me to want to do it as fanwork). I’m trying to replace her with another mental centerpiece but I haven’t come up with a story for her yet (and she’ll probably end up horrendously overpowered as well. It’s a recurring problem.)

I lot of it, I’ll just repeat the same stuff over and over. The fire mage and her friends have been working as singers at the Iceberg Lounge for like three years now, with various misadventures including demons showing up to fight Erik, helping Batman, and mostly just lots of snark and banter. Before that she was redoing the file room in Arkham and occasionally getting dragged into doing security work. Yes, it’s all very very self-indulgent.

But some of the smaller stories, the non-epic length ones and the one-shots, end up pretty good. And I try to write them down. The problem becomes when it’s a series of adventures with no specific end. And then I don’t know where the plot is going and it becomes a mess. I have two of those novels in process.

A lot of them I can pick out what influenced them. Some of them I can’t, aside from liking certain things (why do I like whump? No idea, but I sure do. I only just learned there was a specific term for it, for pete’s sake.) And it’s usually a giant mix of things (I have one – that’ll post once I get it edited a bit – that has an character inspired by Alpert, one of LB Lee’s characters, some of the set-up inspired by a Sherlock fic, and most of it just my own really messed up brain.)


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