Tag: meme replies

11, 12, 15

15: Do you know your characters’ MBTI personalities? 

Uggh. As useful as the general concept of introvert/extrovert and all that is, honestly I find MBTI lists sit somewhere between Zodiac signs and Hogwarts House Sorting. And absolutely none of that was anything I had more than a cursory interest in. As a useful tool to start thinking about general personality concepts, sure. But do I bother to actually sit down and feel out a questionnaire-type outline of any character’s personality? *snort of laughter* Are there characters I can point to and say, this one feels like an introvert more, or is going to want to be nurturing, or prefers things regimented and orderly? Yeah, some. 

Heledir is an introvert (in that he needs recharging after heavy social situations), ace, very invested in the gossipy romances of people around him, doesn’t mind chaos, so he appears to be more sensing and intuition. Edrahil and Finrod will have to be a foil. But to have this defined and adhere to that – nope.

11: Which character do you have the most in common with?

Confession – I also hate these ‘do you relate to your characters or not’ questions. Uh, off the top of my head, eldest daughter with mild emotional trauma who stays home instead of leaving her family far behind, who is if not ace then probably somewhere on the grey spectrum, who would prefer to stay in her library and listen to small concerts and write hundreds of popular children’s stories and romance novels – yeah, there’s both projection and wish fulfillment with Findis.

12: Which character do you have the least in common with?

Well, I’m often writing from the POV of male elves, ones that have fought wars and died and led armies and countries. One of those.

POV!

Typing this on my phone – here’s the POV switch from Dreadful Wind:

The rushing wind retained his sense of self.  His master, the true king of all Arda, had not deluded or erased that from him. If memories were fogged, details forgotten, it was only because they had not been important enough to preserve.  He still knew of the joy that he had so cruelly lost, of a wife and young son (pride, such pride, and such sorrow, such hatred on their behalf), and his master had not discouraged those feelings but helped the wind to retain them.  It had been a long time since the rushing wind had been confined to a body -and oh! what a limiting torment that cage had been!- and unlike the other mere Houseless phantoms, the rushing wind did not hunger to be confined to that physical pain again.  What was the taste of food to this freedom?  Here on the plane visible to the soul and not sight, his body was whole and beautiful and powerful. He could run with perfect balance, without heed to blood or lung.  Faster than Nahar, more agile than the skittering brood of Ungoliant, he was uncatchable.  Death was a memory abandoned, for what use was he that need no longer fear it?  He was a storm wind loyal to Morgoth, a prize of the sky stolen from the Dark Lord’s younger brother.The rushing wind remembered his life as an elf -greater though his form was now, and he would not trade it.  He recognized his tribesmen -Minyar, Vanyar, the name did not matter- golden and beautiful, returned now, within his reach now.  And oh! no longer whole, were they?  No longer free from fear and misery!  What glee the rushing wind felt to see the twisted faces of anguish and torment on his kinsmen, his exaltation to taste their agony on the spectral plane.  Their deaths!  Now they were the twisted fearful things.  (That disgust, that fear, damn them!)  Now they were hopeless.They deserved it, for his wife and child if not the man that the wind had once been.
The rushing wind saw his former leader, arrogant ungentle Imin, the vain fool.  A shock, but a chance for delightful revenge.  He hated Imin most, the one who had allowed his cruel ostracizing, who had had power and love and opportunities.  A full belly.  Praise from everyone, universal adoration.  Imin who stood garbed in strength and wealth, unchanged in authority, who had never suffered as the wind had suffered.  Imin’s outward accouterments had changed, but not to extent of other elves, and the soul was the same.  No one had disfigured Imin; no death had touched Imin.  Imin First of Chieftains, who thought he knew the rushing wind, thought he could challenge that which the Maiar of Manwë could not best, could compel the wind to obey him as if he was still one of his subordinate tribesmen – that fool!  Oh Mighty Imin!  The rushing wind was stronger now; untouchable Imin could be -would be- bested.Slow, no, it must be slow.  Slow as his torment had been.Imin called for a grandson to flee, and the rushing wind choked on rage and resentment.  The wind remembered his own son, a bright clever boy, one with such unjustly thwarted promise.  His son deserved to be here, assured by the company of father or grandfather of how precious he was regarded, given command and safety.  The rushing wind felt divided, uncertain whose attention was more deserving.  The boy was running.  The wind laughed.  How dare he.  The rushing wind had been unmatched in that skill; not even Imin or his favorites had outclassed him, and this was before he had been found and shaped by Morgoth.  (Such bitterness, those years he had barely been able to walk- no one else deserved to do aught but hobble as he had been forced to.)  The boy ran towards a woman -Grandmother?  Yes, but this woman did not feel like Iminyë on the plane of thought and soul; something was off.  Was his memory not untouched?The rushing wind reached the Vanyar woman draped in fine lace and gold, this beautiful regal breakable thing, eager to revenge himself.  Revenge a wife and son.

He knew her.
He knew this woman’s soul; how could he not? It was the first soul outside his own that he had ever known. More familiar than Imin, more familiar than his -their- long lost son.
His companion, the other whole that was half of their union.
She was whole, beautiful, restored in body, healed in soul – how?
That meant the grandson – hers? Imin’s grandson? But then how- was he the child of his son? That beautiful child? What of his son, the clever boy, the quiet boy? Was he whole, happy? And had they not conceived a second child – had he forgotten them? What had been hidden from his memory? What else had he lost?

She screamed in anguish- not the same anguish he felt, not the same memories of resentment and loathing (self-loathing, oh! that had been as strong as his outward hatred, as hers, as what had poisoned and stunted their son). Horror, but not the horror he had meant to cause. She knew him as he knew her, saw all of his soul from shadows to depths. Echo of a scream of loss he had never heard, the scream of loss and horror and rage his death had forced her to make. Fear, horrible fear. For him. Always for his behalf. Love. Arm reaching for him. That outstretched arm, his

Maktâmê

. Trying to capture him, her Alakô.

No!

invite to dinner with your parents: beren, túrin, nellas, haleth, treebeard :D forest cryptids edition hehehe

Ironically I think Túrin has the best social skills and graces and is the most adaptive for various social groups and interactions, but with that Curse, I’m inadvertently dooming myself and my family to pain, death, and all manner of evil ironic bullshit. If not, he would have been at the top of the list, but now he’s at the bottom.

  1. Nellas – (here’s my shy friend, she’s new to the area, awkward explanations)
  2. Beren – (too sarcastic, bye dad, then again, maybe easier to explain, and he’s not my boyfriend)
  3. Haleth – (same problem of diplomatically bad sarcasm)
  4. Treebeard – (ohshit! a talking tree! How can I explain this- what do we serve him to eat? He can’t sit at the dinner table!)
  5. Túrin – ….Thanks, Morgoth

5, 13, 14

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

Ooooh. Ingwë as a main character, and then Unbegotten Imin. That was a unpredictable (but maybe not) development.

Writing a fic from the POV of Durin the Deathless- not only a dwarf fic (technically), but one from the Third Age. My focus is so strongly First Age that having something in the Third Age that isn’t even Gondorian Appendicies History was unusual.

13) your strengths as an author

Ummm. Like weaknesses, this is hard to see from the inside looking out. Dialogue is generally easy for me to write, and I think it sounds natural just as often as it doesn’t. Descriptive language, understandable metaphors and similes.

I think I’m well-practiced and strong at hitting that spot of giving the reader just enough gore and horror and sadness in a tasteful way that keeps it beautiful and bittersweet hopeful and not too overwhelming. 

14) do you make playlists for your current wips?

I’m not consistent on if I have background music or not while writing, and to make an actual playlist would require more effort and discipline than I have.

Author asks – multiples of four?

4) favorite character you’ve written

Oooh~ For Silm fic, hard to say. Faron Mithmeren is the one I’ve written the most of, been longest in his head, so he is very easy for me.

8) favorite genre to write

Flashback arcs. 😛  Okay, okay. I like writing fun banter between characters that when using dramatic irony becomes as bittersweet and sad as hell or the opposite. Slowest of slow burn romances with mutual unaddressed pining would be the actual genre – I’m too much of a shipping sap to be a true gen writer.

12) your weaknesses as an author

Giving characters a distinct voice and personality. I feel I have a big problem with all my characters talking and sounding too alike.

I omit words in phrases and clauses I feel are superfluous and want to juggle syntax around for emphasis and speaker distance, wishing my word-flow to follow this very distinct but clear rhythm in my head- a long rolling wave to a pause, then rolling up that looping canter stride again. Of which I know I can blame a smidge of this tendency on the idiosyncrasies of Texan US English dialect, of which I am not a truly native speaker -and yet… 

I don’t write exactly how I speak, (I am terrible in-eloquent though just as rambling), but the distinction for my readers’ clarity is not as strong as it needs be. (ex: ‘needs be’ instead of ‘needs to be’ or ‘should be’. And it’s staying that way. Y’all are getting the accent typed out; have fun deciphering it. Sometime thse typos aren’t typos. Sometimes they are.)

16) are there any characters who haunt you?

Honestly, I’m not sure what sensation this question is really driving towards. Characters whose stories captured me when I read them and then wanted to write about them? Or characters who I want to but haven’t/can’t write for them yet?

Aegnor/Andreth at this intimate but very distant look at their tragedy fits both feelings- theirs are the stories I’m mulled over in my head the longest, and sit unfinished, and yet through the lens of outside characters like Angrod or Baragund I want to write about them.

20) do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

Both? I’ll write tiny spurts of only a sentence or two, or when I have a WIP go and add a few sentences and rearrange them. But then once it starts flowing, I’ll write most of a story, if not all if it’s a short one-shot, in one go.

24) have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

Expert, no. Casual research for more facts – all the time. For instance, despite taking several studio art classes in drawing and painting, and introductory printmaking, I never took any pottery classes. Which meant for the “Making Friends” Gaiden story for “Of Ingwë Ingweron”, I had to look up early pottery methods. 

I don’t go into extreme details with my stories, but for instance I knew enough vaguely about Ancient Roman mining thanks to reading Lindsey Davis’s first novel in the Falco Mysteries to know that a quick preview of ancient British-Roman mines would help me map out what the mines would be like and the tasks performed- thus the use of fire-setting.

“Brides of Death” I was pretty clear that the longest part of writing that fic was the Wikipedia trawl through ‘poisonous plants of Western Europe and the Near East’. But was I researching the actual medical effects of ingesting those plants for symptoms and the proper amount to cause death? No and thankfully I’ve yet to be called out for it.

Never have I ever written modern AU fic 👀

Okay, this thing right here is halfway to a fic already, because I adore fluffy minimum angst ASoIaF Stark Family AUs. Now what else might I turn around and make a modern AU (which, idk- I only read SF and Fantasy and historical fiction and blends of the three with added murder mysteries unless you count AU fanfics and even then~) …the fluffy Second Age Red Band stuff is using modern stuff as inspiration, so that cast would be easiest to plop into a modern AU, but it loses some of its charm and appeal. Nah. The “Jeyne is pregnant” fic is it.