An Absent Shadow

While I was prodding away at Tea and Sorcery the other day, something occurred to me: Mikala is simply not Mikala without a psychopath in a cage.

The character is many things: a sorcerer, a generally unapologetic womanizer, a peacockish fop, and a deeply benevolent and steadfast creature. That last bit is having some difficulty showing itself as compared to the way I wrote him in the game he was originally from; in it, he spent a great deal of time being toyed with by an extremely charismatic and plaintive murderer whose prison wagon he was escorting. This was made all the more entertaining by Mikala's personal faith, as he follows a god that stands for compassion and forgiveness--but has no tolerance for evil acts.

While there's certainly a malevolent antagonist in Tea and Sorcery, Mikala's had very little contact with him outside of a very civil meeting in which he had no idea what the bastard was up to, and without an opposing force to bring out his less frivolous side, he's not half as much fun to work with.

Ah, well. At least I know how to get under his skin.

"You make a very compelling case and I find it impossible to convince myself 

that you're lying, but oh sweet Bahamut get this lunatic away from me!"

My Muse is a Jackass

Case in point:


Mebrit fumbled with the keys to his apartment, nearly
dropping them when he went to put them back in his
pocket. Upon opening the door and stepping inside, he was
almost entirely certain that he was hallucinating.

"Miss Kos," he called out weakly as he nudged Tiramisu
aside and shut the door behind Endrin, "why is there a dead
woman in the hallway?"

"Well, I was going to leave her in the living room, but she
clashed with the upholstery."

Tea and Sorcery

That was my NaNoWriMo project for 2008. Did I--after four years of giving up and burning out--finally drag my ass across the 50k finish line? Yes. Was the story done? Fuck, no.

As of last night, I finally decided to tie off the only truly offending loose thread in appropriately bittersweet fashion, though I'm still fiddling with how to go about it. None of this sequel-baiting dreck. Closure. The story will surely end up being more grisly (and what else could I ask of four vindictive dark elves?), but oddly enough should give the character in question something closer to a happily-ever-after.

Why am I babbling about this? Because I'm actually fairly happy with the prologue as it stands, and have released it to the wild to nibble on low-hanging branches.

Masks and Bubbers

In the interest of not making an ass of myself while working on last year's NaNo, I went back to doing a bit of research on opiates. Despite my lack of interest in actually using drugs, that one in particular I find oddly enthralling to read about. Perhaps it's because it goes so well with the whole Victorian-Steampunk thing.

Thus, I'm picking through Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater in search of something more anecdotal than dry medical reading, and have come across this gem:

...certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language,
of any man that he is _disguised_ in liquor; for, on the
contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety, and it is when
they are drinking (as some old gentleman says in Athenaeus),
that men [Greek text]--display themselves in their true
complexion of character, which surely is not disguising
themselves.

I've been saying that for years. I have never bought it for a minute when anyone blamed hateful behaviour or split personalities on inebriation, but instead see it as stripping away all the polite repressions and masks to reveal whatever one truly has inside; sometimes something very ugly. The only person I personally know to have been an angry, violent drunk had a violent temper when stone cold sober. Alcohol merely peeled off the rest of the facade.

Or maybe I just feel that way because I never did anything but giggle and daydream and be more forthcoming with my sympathy while drunk: all core elements of who I am, but not ones that I readily put forth.

Who knows?