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Subject: "Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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Conferences Our Witches at War/Gallian Gothic Topic #85
Reading Topic #85, reply 4
Gryphonadmin
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Sep-21-20, 10:37 PM (EDT)
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4. "RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I"
In response to message #3
 
   LAST EDITED ON Sep-21-20 AT 10:37 PM (EDT)
 
>>Not so much the former, possibly some of the latter, and the rest,
>>even Flan's not entirely sure of at present, except that it feels like
>>it's important.
>
>Well, so long as everyone involved is supposed to be some level of
>confused then I don't have to feel like I missed a turn somewhere, and
>can just go back to admiring the scenery.

Oh, yeah, or rather no, it's not meant to be clear yet. Flandre's making rapid progress, but she doesn't really understand her emotions very well yet, so at this point she only knows for certain that she feels something very strongly—strongly enough that she has an instinctive need for some kind of token to represent it, even though she's not sure yet what it is. (I think on some level she's also looking for some form of anchor, to reassure herself that she's not just imagining it, whatever it is.) She'll get there! She's just got some catching up to do.

>It's a suitable ending, it just has impact, which is not bad, just
>noteworthy. I suspect it may have a little more impact from posting
>here in fact (between the Mini Story and various bit of background
>info fleshing out the elder Scarlets to being more than the typical
>D&D character backstory angst fuel dead parents are often relegated
>to.)

Mm. I've always been kind of ambivalent about characters who were created specifically to not be there. I mean, they serve an important narrative function, and often the alternative would be the kind of lengthy biographical digressions about side characters that are one of the stereotypical hallmarks of thriller writers like Tom Clancy (many of whose novels would be about half the length if he had, you know, not detailed the mall security guards' high school football careers and whatnot upon each one's first appearance in the story).

But because they're inevitably a sort of shortcut, it can feel very cheap and nasty to use them. You mention D&D, but my go-to lookup for that kind of character has long been Thomas and Martha Wayne. In 99 out of 100 retellings of the Batman story, do we know anything about them, other than that he was a doctor, they were rich, and they were killed in front of their son? Nah. It's not important! They're not important; only the fact that they're dead is.* I didn't want Remi and Flan's parents to be that kind of cardboard cutout; I wanted them to be as alive as I could make them, given that they're already long dead when the story starts.

Fortunately, they pretty much took care of that for me, developing into actual characters I have a real fondness for more or less spontaneously. I knew they were going to work out when I finished the flashback scene in TTW Act IV, and A Name to Call Her Own cemented it for me. (And there's more coming, which is nice—one of the things that I find goes a long way toward mitigating the "created to be dead" problem is if the characters in question have a continuing impact on the story's world beyond just the effect that their being gone has on the characters who are left, if that makes any sense.)

>The more she's around, the more Meiling reminds me of a more on the
>ball Scorpia from SPOP (Netflix She-ra for any unfamiliar with the
>abbreviation.) Since I don't believe you've partaken of that series,
>this is a complimentary comparison, Scorpia is a big girl with a heart
>of gold, just dealt a few bad hands, but game to keep playing anyway.

Heh, I do enjoy that type of character, the big, hearty, cheerful-in-adversity type. (Also, the type who's not as dumb as a lot of people think she is.) When G first met Meiling in TTW Act VI, his first thought was of Kanna from the Teikokukagekidan, but upon reflection, my take on her also has more than a little of Gudrun Truemace in her—gentler than Kanna, not as boisterous, but still perfectly prepared to pick up a Buick and fuck up a baddie's day with it if the need is there. :)

(I've also got some more backstory coming for her in the next one, I hope. Like the others, she has some mileage on her, and it's odd that we know more about Sakuya's background than hers at the moment, given how insular Sakuya is vs. how much of an open book is Meiling.)

--G.
* for bonus DC Comics content, contrast this with Ma and Pa Kent, who are hugely important to Superman's story even in the versions where one or both have died before the narrative begins
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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 Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I [View All] Gryphonadmin Sep-21-20 TOP
   RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I Astynax Sep-21-20 1
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             RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I Gryphonadmin Sep-21-20 4
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                      RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I rwpikul Sep-27-20 34
                          RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I BlackAeronaut Sep-27-20 35
          RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I Peter Eng Sep-21-20 5
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                      RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I Gryphonadmin Sep-22-20 20
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      RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I Gryphonadmin Sep-22-20 23
          RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I Astynax Sep-22-20 24
              RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I Gryphonadmin Sep-22-20 25
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                          RE: Gallian Gothic Book 2: NSM Act I Astynax Sep-22-20 29
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