#PennedPossibilities 319 — MC POV: Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like there?
On a farm and in the Fell Woods. I don't remember much about the former, but the latter was both exciting and difficult every day. I chose to live with wolves, which because of my gift better understood me every day. They were still wolves, and they lived and ate like wolves, not humans. I survived despite the dirt, raw meet, living without shelter, and an incredible amount of walking. The wolves cherished the cunning and technology I brought to the pack and helped me find a way. They taught me to hunt. People, I learned much later, like to be touched; contact was natural to wolves, but sadly despite people liking to be touched they don't routinely do so. The whole leaving the wild to attend school has left me with what one of Her Highness' psychologist call species-disphoria. I'm more comfortable living amongst beasts than people because they are so much more friendly and, if not, so much more predictable. I'm sure I'll go back when school's over—despite having a new boyfriend.
#WordWeavers 2405.19 — How did you settle on your MC’s appearance?
Historically, I wrote my characters such that I found them attractive. I don't do that anymore.
Sometimes I don't have control, except for hair styles and clothes, or the lack thereof. The story or character may have certain in-the-moment requirement, like when the MC needed to train in an almost all-male fight gym as a prizefighter (she'd later win a championship). Of course she had tailored pink and black gym wear made of technical fabric that outlined every curve—which proved interesting.
These days I do the best not to assign an appearance at all, instead keeping things vague and sticking to describing only what's absolutely necessary. My experiences with publishers is that'll they'll ignore your descriptions for cover art and promotion anyway. In any case, doing this allows the reader to imagine someone they would find attractive(†). The MC in the current WiP is described physically only as tall, shy, so beautiful that both sexes fall for her, and that she has "winter eyes," whatever that is. In the other story, the only thing I'm settled on is described by the devil-girl something like this:
"Take two finger length pieces of rusty rebar, sharpen one end, bend it ninety degree, and stick one above each temple, pointing backwards. Makes wearing hats problematic. Yeah. Gets messy when they try to grab you by the head in a fight, especially if it sticks in..."
She's also describes her very olive complexion; she's mentioned green eyes in a mirror and red hair everywhere. It could easily change in revision.
(†) A recent writer's prompt asked about my target audience. Can I say "imaginative?"
#WordWeavers 2405.18 — What kind of dragon (behavior or looks) would your MC be?
In one WiP, this question makes as much sense as asking a typical Irish person what kind of Tahitian they would be (body type). In the other, dragons also exist but seem to be (it's not totally defined) the result of some kind of contagious magic. We've already seen a wyvern, wbo is a monstrous fire breathing bat, and will soon realize there is a monitor lizard version (a wyrm?), but by this token there could also be a cat dragon. Thus, this question makes no sense in the other WiP, either.
#PennedPossibilities 317 — What clothing materials or outfits feel the most comfortable to your villain?
She was arguably a villain, and she got a thuggish prizefighter to try to kill the MC. She also tried to help a coup d'etat in the mob, which failed. The MC meet her in an alley when the MC dissed her gang boyfriend and she tried to slit her throat. The MC took away her ivory handled jackknife, which becomes a character by itself in later stories. She goes by the moniker of Mustang, maybe because like the car she's unsteerable?
She's described as
"The women looked overly girly in garish reds or pinks, with matching makeup and bracelets, except for a buzzed-cut blonde tanned woman [Mustang] who wore brass stud piercings. (Didn't brass have lead in it...? Poisonous... Oh, never mind.) It worked; she looked tough, more so maybe than her gold chain-wearing boyfriend in a white tee shirt."
We're talking cotton here. Cheap. She's wearing something tight and black around her hips.
#WordWeavers 2405.16 — If your characters were in a museum, how would they act?
It would depend on how they ended up in the museum. If the devil-girl were put on display, it would end badly for whomever put her there. Were she a patron, she'd be indistinguishable from the crowd. Once she got herself into a sealed vault without breaking in or using the vault door; the interior turned out to be somewhat of a museum (it had family pictures), but she didn't steal anything. It did help her solve a kidnapping, however.
#WordWeavers 2405.15 — Who are your most and least gullible characters?
Of the MC's in the two current WiPs, it's exactly the opposite of what you might think.
The devil-girl had been very successful in most all her endeavors, but she'd never gotten to where she was if she wasn't used by someone every... single... time. Mind you, it doesn't always end well for those who gulled her!
Wintereyes comes across as an ingénue and innocent enough that you'll fear she'll get used like a tissue and thrown away dirtied. Not the case. She mediated between a dragon and a farmer whose silo got burnt down. The dragon apologized! (So did the farmer.) She's observant, quiet. Around people she's shy, but says what she sees and sets misunderstandings straight. Kind and helpful, everyone—humans, dragons, wolves, even cats—ends up doing what she sees is best for them and they like it, despite plans they might have had for her. Because she understands what she doesn't know, her skepticism and guilelessness plays havoc on those trying to use her.
#PennedPossibilities 316 — Does your MC or SC have a hard time connecting with others?
Both MCs in the current two WiPs have a hard time connecting with others for different reasons. They could be summed up for one they're people and for the other they're not animals.
If you've followed my posts, you're welcome to guess which is which.
#PennedPossibilities 315 — What smells remind your MC of their childhood? CW: Food, gross.
Two stories, two MCs, two very different answers...
Devil-girl:
She was not ever particularly copasetic with her elevation from middle class to atmospheric. When she found herself having mistreated a servant, threatening their livelihood, her autistic construction of empathy as in /I'm living in her shoes and this is fear/ kicked in. She worked hard from that moment on to /be/ with anyone humbly, and the servants kept her secret of visiting in their quarters or at the homes safe. (Actually, not entirely as the servant-mistake was one of her guardian's "lessons," but let's ignore that.) What she came to adore was a peasant bread that represented in her head getting away from all her responsibilities. Buttery, cinnamony, yeasty, with lots of honey and chopped up pumpkin. Passing by an open bakery door will often remind her of simpler times.
Wintereyes:
She doesn't remember a lot before her gift manifested at age 7. The going theory is that it broke something in her head. Farm smells, flowers, even fields of corn, elicit nothing, though she visits her birth parents' land claim regularly when the Blue Feather's pack hunting grounds shift to that part of the Fell Woods. Her mother's cooking in her kitchen, usually fresh venison or rabbit Wintereyes caught, is simply human food. How she survived going off with a wolf pack at that young age is a tale I should pursue at some point. The fact is that she did. Survive. And well. The smells of a fresh kill, laced with steaming iron scent, does make her remember becoming wild and first running free. It also reminds her of the other smells associated with recent death, some quite noisome. There's a thrill there, even if in the beginning she was barely surviving on too rich organ meat her teeth could chew, or when the alpha wasn't kind, meat Mother Wolf chewed for her. That was a special smell she remembers fondly. Her brother—a hunter that the wolves soon tolerated so long as he didn't visit often—taught her to make fire and to cook meat. The half-burned smell of meat dropped into a wood fire still makes her mouth water, even as it dredges up memories of reaching into a fire and burns, and of ashes and charcoaled fat, which ground in her teeth like soft sand. She became a much more skillful campfire cook out of necessity.
Oh, one other smell: Wet wolf (which is identical to wet dog), because while a wolf could keep themself "clean" with their tongue, the result of a human attending a kill, skin caked with ground-in dirt, sweat, and later ash, was more than the sensitive noses of her pack could stand. They often chased her into streams. She splashed them back, of course!
#PennedPossibilities 314 — Has your MC ever felt as though they were reborn in the mental / emotional sense?
In the current story, she experiences a mental breakdown when events crush her worldview completely. [Spoilers, so you'll have to take my word on this.] Her understanding of what was evil, wrong. Her understanding of the trustworthiness of people, wrong. The goals she set to fix the magic that she saw as ruining others' lives... evil.
She's doesn't quite accept the latter. However, she finds it very weird to face the people around her without a deep down feeling that they will someday betray her.
#WordWeavers 2405.12 — Who is the best friend in your story?
The MC is incapable of seeing that it is her.
For most of her story arc, she's suspicious of making friends having been a prizefighter and then working in the mob. She's also somewhat autistic, but trained to deal with people. The problem is that when she's amongst people, working with them, even the baddies, she's the type that gets the job done, teaches those that need teaching how to get the job done, and will always protect her teammates and subordinates, taking responsibility. You don't get in her face, however; certainly only once, anyway. Strangely or not so strangely, those in her orbit see her as a leader and personable. (All she wants is to go home to be alone with her books, but she'd never complain.) She goes along with it when others are friendly with her, not really knowing how to say no and understanding this was what she was trained to do.
To say she's well liked is an understatement. Not many people support you as she does, or will straighten you out and make you fly right when things are bad for you. She saves one marriage by punching the husband in the nose. She's there for others. She'll enjoy a meal with you if that's what you need and listen to you vent. At least one guy has a crush on her. Others fight for her. Some will risk their life for her...
#PennedPossibilities 313 — Is your MC or SC one to confess romantic feelings early on, or to conceal them for long periods of time?
It's hard to know for sure. She has worked in a world were such attactions are a tool to control others, and she's controlled others with them. Having transitioned from being a criminal to operating in a similar capacity on the other side of the law, she ended up tailing a snobbish dandy... who went on, after various provocations, to being someone quite different than his affectations indicated. She thought to pin him in a wrestling hold to get information out of him, but he threw her off and she fought him only to a draw (not easy for anyone to do since she's a former prizefighter). When later that day she got him to drop his façade, she found him actually adorably vulnerable. Not really knowing her own reactions, she obsessively took him from dinner, to dancing, to... um... dessert in one evening.
#PennedPossibilities 311 — What is a memory that makes your SC swell with pride?
That armor. The black dragon armor, light as an autumn breeze. The last who owned it, legends say, a million died to take it away from her, but failed in the end.
She gave it to me: The ruler of the world, the most powerful thaumaturge alive. I was the one who nearly killed her, when we fought for our lives incidentally breaking the Curse of Harmony upon her.
I didn't break the curse but was the one who nearly killed her. Yet...
My friend—whose life I saved by pushing her out of the way of a plasma bolt and getting my flank burnt as a result—reminded me of the legend. Made me test the magic, which let me fly like an arrow and loop and dodge more agilely than a sparrow. She added, "She told me it's the first time anyone's got that close in a century. It's a bribe, you know, A loan. She wants you to work for her. You impressed her. "
#PennedPossibilities 312 — Is your MC or SC a leader, a follower, or something in between?
Wintereyes is not a leader, nor is she a follower. She knows her mind and will state it when needed to help someone, or protect to herself. She's human, but also a member of the Blue Feathers wolf pack—and she's bitten its leader when he's abused pack mates. She's not omega, not low status; wolves respect her knives in the hunt. She knows when to help, and when to stay back. She's a mediator, as she's demonstrated between a dragon and people. It's that she truly cares to do her best for others. Those that know her know this; they listen; they protect her.
#PennedPossibilities 310 — MC or SC POV: What was your favorite day or holiday when you were a child? Favorite Day Remembrance CW: Sad.
Why are you making me remember this now? My favorite day? When I was a child? It was /that/ day, each time Mom returned home. She would sing to me, but she belonged to the world, the theatre, to the concert hall. Plenty of her albums proclaimed that. "Midnight, the Voice and the Heart of the Nation." Those albums, they're all I really have of her. She wasn't one for family pictures. Or family. It's why I can't listen to them any more, and walk out of restaurants when any of her show tunes play.
I do sing her songs in the shower, unthinkingly. My roommate doesn't know who I really am, but she's told me my voice is just like hers. Stupid memory. Stupid reflexes.
I remember being /so happy/ when she'd return home. She'd sing to me, but wasn't at all "hands on." She'd sing and she'd listen to me telling all the things that happened that day with friends and nannies—always with a smile, but I was always on the floor or in my bed or in someone else's lap. Her manager—with whom I share my hair color and skin color so he likely fathered me—would hold me while she sang sometimes. He'd read to me. He'd call me his little tomato, since that was the hair color we shared.
I remember the pair once laughing after I'd been put to bed, not sleeping. I'd peeked through a barely opened door to see. /Him/ she held.
I loved them both.
You've made me remember. Are you happy now? How many times could it have been that I remember her returning? A few dozen? They died before I was five, and now I remember /that,/ too.
[That's the Aurora Midnight, the devil girl from the Reluctance stories. Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]
#WordWeavers 2405.10 — Antagonist POV: What do you like the most about yourself?
[A short tootfic. Likely canon. Her Highness speaking. From /Inklings:/]
My jaw almost dropped at the shear gall of the question, but the Midlands plenipotentiary was, if anything, expert at being jovial. His smile was disarming. He was a diplomat. I didn't gape, but put the tea cup down carefully.
"You're referring to the dragon incident, aren't you?"
He nodded. He plunked a couple lumps of brown sugar in his tea, stirring. It accounted for his corpulence, something rare amongst his gaunt brethren who spent much of their day running on forest paths. He'd made it from the Midlands in just weeks, on horseback I guessed. Poor horse. "It's on everyone's tongue. You'd mobilized the militia. Detailed reports hit the Forest Ridge High Tower as if carried by a thunderstorm."
He was making sure I knew "people" kept him well informed, and that my military wasn't what interested him. Much, anyway. I sighed, crossing my legs as I sat back.
I'd mobilized the best and most radiant of my magic users. None could best me, but we expected to face a wyvern the size of my in-town mansion. It had burnt up part of the Fell Woods. A good thing, thinking about that unassailable haven for monsters and wild beasts. Then it attacked a farm.
"The attack on the farm was an accident," I said off-handedly, steepling my fingers.
He paused. Blue eyes speared me. I'd never announced the details of what happened because if I made them official rather than rumor, the public might panic. Nobody died.
The Midlands ought know, I decided then and there. It'd be to my advantage. I'd let him decide the implications. "The grain silo had a moisture problem. It had started to ferment. Who would have thought a dragon might like beer?"
He chuckled, then, "You're serious? You know this? /How?"/ He put down his tea cup with a loud clink, spilling some of the reddish liquor.
I'd rode in with an elite company of my army, through a wood arch that proclaimed "Cornfeld," into a farm yard. I'd been ready to use my radiance to repel fire; dragons of all shapes breathed fire. My troops had the best spears, but it had been centuries since anyone had needed weapons against dragon scale. Would newiron even work? Drowning the beast by swirling airborne the farm's pond was almost our best offense, if the magical beast decided to fight. I knew they disliked fighting. I hoped that I had that much correct. If I had to resort to radiant kinesis to heave rock from a stone fence, it might decide to retaliate against my Townships—if I failed.
What I found was a half-naked girl, barely a woman though very tall, mollifying a distraught farmer and mediating with a red dragon who looked to be hanging on her every word. I could tell this, even though the dragon had the form of a giant bat.
Apparently, with her mediation, both parties were apologizing to each other!
Worse, though covered with mud and ash, visibly scarred, the young woman was devastatingly beautiful. The type of beautiful that made a seasoned and well worn woman like me think of a different kind of bedmate. I wasn't a man...
Wintereyes was her name. She had befriended a dragon.
Innocent and kind.
And immeasurably dangerous.
The ingénue now attended my magic university, despite being uncomfortable around people and wearing clothing. Learning to be human. One of mine.
I said, "What I like about myself is that I know when to fight and when to make friends."
Wintereyes (the MC) is great with beasts, magical, monstrous, and mundane. She /befriends/ them, which without revealing spoilers means they get along very well with her. Being friends with animals she may well eat does make for an interesting personal philosophy.
Caramello (the SC) has never had to get along with animals, but he does have some familiarity with dolphins as a sailor and birds as a Crab Islander. However, him wanting Wintereyes as a girlfriend, he is learning to tolerate them more than he would have ever imagined. Not only is she worth the effort, it may save his life.
#WordWeavers 2405.06 — Who is your most fun character?
Wintereyes.
She's a free spirit unlike any of my previous characters, but she's always kind. Despite being shy, she's incredibly courageous but doesn't understand how impressive that is. Having lived amongst wolves (she's human), she doesn't understand what it means to live amongst people, but is learning. She's sticking to her "friendly" principles when challenged with unerring innocence, integrity, and passion. It does make her more-than-occasionally NSFW, however...
The MC is employed by her main antagonist, who is an absolute ruler. Theoretically, the MC is second in command, but reality begs to differ. One of the reasons the MC accepted the troubleshooter job is that the MA informed her that her supposedly dead father is actually a political prisoner in a nearby country. In the back of her mind, the MC wonders whether she can use some of the MA's power to pay certain miscreant warlords a nasty visit...
This is a possible sequel I've set up in the current story by having the MC befriend a very talented up and coming military officer.
The main antagonist. This is the person she once considered as the person who ruined her life. She once worked for someone whose stated goal was assassinating her, and didn't care if they succeeded. For the last few months, the MC lived in a roommate situation that made them neighbors. Her roommate was being trained by the main antagonist, but also had a bad relationship with her. Their proximity was always a background tension in the story. In the current story, the MC is now working for the main antagonist and understands the MA's "evil" reasons better, but still dislikes her. The MC could ask for her own suite, free of charge, in the same building but is planning on taking her new salary to live elsewhere.
#WordWeavers 2405.04 — How does your SC deal with failure?
Try different ways to get what she wants until frustration sets in, followed by anger, followed by doing something stupid.
When all the hauling companies in her home prefecture blacklisted her not simply for being female, but for being female while being persistent, she may or may not have thrown a brick through some windows and turned over some vehicles. She ran from the constables. She got tricked in another city into thinking she could earn quick money hauling questionable things to start her own company. She got blackmailed into the mob. She's still saving, for that day she might escape.
#PennedPossibilities 305 — Are there any characters of yours that you wound up HATING once you were finished with a story or WIP?
Taking a cue from @floofpaldi on how to answer this one, I have characters that are HATEFUL but none that I hate. I'm not to a Conan Doyle level that I can hate a character so much that I want to kill off my Sherlock Holmes.
Occasional hateful characters are great fun to write and pit against my MC. She ticks off one misogynist prizefighter during a press interview where her trainer presents her as a contender. An off-handed remark. He becomes her boogeyman, but he's stupidly angry, obviously uses steroids, blurts racist epithets, and gets used by others as muscle. The time he attacks her on a crowded public street, she manages to get him to trip into traffic where he breaks his legs. She walks off with her "Starbucks" she'd put down on a newspaper rack to deal with him.
Another time he ambushes her in a quiet neighborhood midday when nobody is around. His first punch to the head renders her unable to use magic part of her martial art and leaves her stumbling. He fights only with brawn. He wants to kill her. How could you hate a character on character setup like that?
She defeats him with a child's wooden pull toy. Anymore would be spoilers.
#PennedPossibilities 304 — How did your MC feel about friendships growing up? How do they feel about them now?
This one is easy. She was betrayed by a boy she thought was her soulmate at age eight. She distrusts friendship full stop.
She's learning how wrong she was now, and seems to be taking the advanced course in the subject with multiple boyfriends and people who intensely value and support her. Hearing someone loves her more than life itself, she of course commits herself to a deadly confrontation to save him, herself, and his attempted murderer.
#PennedPossibilities 303 — Is your SC one to be haunted by adversity, or to use what they've gone through to become stronger?
I was going to answer only stronger, but because it is true, I'll answer haunted. She calls him /The Monster,/ and he savaged her, but from that experience she learned she could fight, and win, and never be chattel again. She refers to The Monster often, comparing her current actions to that paradigm of evil, and sometimes finding herself wanting. She's not what is often called /good./ Those who know her say she has a death wish. Once, when she thought she'd murdered in an act of enraged vengeance, she tried to stab herself at the source of her magic in her guilt. She's since then experienced and reacted to other things. Bad, things. She remembers. When she encounters situations in the current work that remind her of how she became stronger, they haunt her as she fights to make surviving her past worthwhile to those she helps in the present.
#WordWeavers 2405.02 — What are your MC’s living conditions like? Are they better or worse than average?
Wow, this question! A bit of background: I wrote the original novella, then wrote a prequel novel based on the history in the first story, then retconned the novella, worsened the situation and followed it with new events to make it a novel, /then/ wrote the sequel. It's her life story, now.
In this last story, the answer to this question is the running joke. The new work takes place over three days. She starts having been living with a fellow student, an ever-seeking-male-companionship elite who months ago offered her a free roommate situation—so long as the MC slept with her in the same bed (and her new roommate only sleeps well being held). The next day it's the couch after the MC is reunited with a former coworker (bodyguard) whom she introduces to her elite roommate. They hit it off. Noisily. All night long! The next night, not wanting a repeat performance, she connives to spend a (satisfying) night with her new boyfriend in "palatial" digs in the Residency where the main antagonist lives, but is currently out on a military adventure. Having reconciled with a childhood friend, the subsequent night she ends up on his bed, in a Residency guest suite, sleeping with him and a pile of thaumaturgy books they nerded out over. She regrets not having had more fun with him, but he's too sweet and obviously not ready for that. The next day, she's fighting for her life in a hospital.
Her living conditions are way above average, arguably superior.
Previous Living Conditions
Born in a nice house in an obscure village
Raised in a newly built mansion for a newly titled elite (her)
Homeless for months, having run away, living in encampments and wandering the east coast
Big city hostel for over a year
Gangland trainer's nice apartment with separate beds
Boarding house with aspects of a brothel, where she must defend herself
Leased a one room dance studio where she sleeps on a mat between a wall of open windows and a wall of mirrors, having no need of further furniture
A series of high line hotel and mansion rooms owned the Doña she works for
As for the homelessness, she was moving around without money while hiding her identity, and rarely stayed long. The worst was trying to sleep under eaves in the city during storms; she didn't always have a tent. Regardless, it qualifies as below average living conditions for a total of about a year. It did focus her like of asceticism.
#PennedPossibilities 302 — What is the one thing your SC desires most in the world?
Caramello, aka Caramel-eyes, né [unpronounceable polysyllabic tropical islander name], is the last son of the Chieftain. He is the last in the succession. He's been "exiled" to the Endless Island (the mainland) to avoid his siblings after his father is murdered. What he desires most is to be forgotten. No scratch that. What he desires the most is that his mother, the Chieftain's second wife, survive what he fears is going on right now...