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Back on the first of my original universe overview posts, someone (I think ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
garinarayne) commented that I seem to play more narrator than protagonist with my original writing. That is, the main characters were not, in most cases, some recognisable version of me. *tilts head* That's ... partially true, I think. There sometimes is a version of me, somewhere among the cast, but usually only in a watcher-type role (I'm thinking of Jared in Jawburn). But, in general, yeah. There isn't anyone in, say Dak Territories, or Southwark, or Spindlebone, or Whore Prince, at least not that I can think of. Heh.
garinarayne) commented that I seem to play more narrator than protagonist with my original writing. That is, the main characters were not, in most cases, some recognisable version of me. *tilts head* That's ... partially true, I think. There sometimes is a version of me, somewhere among the cast, but usually only in a watcher-type role (I'm thinking of Jared in Jawburn). But, in general, yeah. There isn't anyone in, say Dak Territories, or Southwark, or Spindlebone, or Whore Prince, at least not that I can think of. Heh.There are two types of stories that are exceptions to this, I think.
The first are those stories I wrote when I was, shall we say, rather younger. *smiles sheepishly* The early days of Medath, for example, or the Shadow Mage iterations. They were ... basically, your standard fantasy self-insert fics. *grins* You know, the ones you tell yourself/the games you play, where you're the fantasy princess/magess who has a cool name, and magical powers, and who rides a dragon to work, and saves her homeland. That sort of thing. Heh. In the earliest ones, the 'me' character was a powerful person, usually a mage, in charge and protecting what's hers (Evelyn in Medath). Later on, they started to be smaller, often initally captives, struggling to stay alive, but usually still with a 'destiny' (Aea in Medath, the heroine in Shadow Mage) - they were often younger, too. Possibly that was me moving closer to reality, towards characters that were closer to actually me, only cooler, rather than big powerful characters I got to live vicariously through. Heh.
Later again, as I moved more towards universes like the Daks and the Jawburn arc of Medath, the 'me' character starting fading out altogether. Possibly because ... well, when you're creating worlds to escape into, who wants to have them be a mirror? Also, possibly because 'me' is just not really that interesting, as a character, and I was moving into the phase where other people were starting to be the most terrifying, fascinating, and bloody confusing things in existence. The stories started to be less fantasies about 'I am a powerful and/or interesting person', and more about 'look, I totally understand other people, really, I do'. *grins sheepishly* Characters through this period started being ... facets of people and philosophies I found fascinating/inexplicable/interesting.
These later stories also tended to have more characters, and more characters with stories and motives and destinies of their own, rather than one 'main' around which that world revolved. I largely blame Dak Territories for this. It was supposed to just have a main character/messiah around which the rest revolved, and then Meruk happened, and Zen happened, and Raidan, and then Shaiar, and Gallana had reasons for hating Aruk, and Mellanie had reasons for sticking with Gellana, and Raidan turned out to be thoroughly screwed up, and Meruk turned into this man I wanted to snuggle and protect from the world, and in the middle of all this, Beren stopped being the focal point and 'master of the story', and started being more the catalyst that drew all these other stories together. *shrugs* And once you start down that road, it's kinda hard to stop. I mean, throughout later stories, I would have favourites, sure, but very rarely after this would single characters/groups have sole command of the plot, simply because the worlds they were in would interact with that plot, and things would get complicated. Heh. I not only lost the 'me' character, I kinda lost the 'main' character, in the sense of 'person who walks through this world and has it bow to their narrative might', too. *shrugs sheepishly*
However, there is a type of story, much later, that sees the re-emergence of a 'me' character, if not quite in the same form as there was back then. And those stories are, basically, stories based on characters I created for the purposes of roleplaying. *grins sheepishly* We're talking Carogne, Galactic Duality, and Alchemy 'verse, basically. Two of which were born from characters I played on musing_way, over on dreamwidth, and the first of which was born when my sister asked me to help her design a (short-lived) RP forum on fictionpress.
Of my currently active stories, there are, I think, three characters that are recognisably (at least from my own POV) versions of me. They are, in order of descending optimism:
- Finn Finicky, from Alchemy 'verse
- Dowling, from Galactic Duality
- Sebastien, from Carogne
Finn is the most optimistic of my current mirrors. For him, it's the 'reading' he does, the delving through the layers of the world, that echoes back to me. It's his fascination with the way things work, the way he loves being able to see, to a level of vision, the layers underneath the world. That only happens to me on the heights of a cycle, and usually only just before I crash (hence why, in Finn's world, it's so dangerous), but it happens. Literally to the level of visions. Finn's an optimistic mirror because Finn has managed to build a functioning life. He has a job (multiple jobs, really, but the second wasn't his choice, and the crafts thing is more of a hobby), doing kinda what I want to do (librarian), and aside from getting drafted into police work and politics through no fault of his own, he more or less works as a person. An antisocial, occasionally bitter person, but a person. Heh. He's not quite me, no more than any of them are exactly me, but he bears quite a bit of resemblence to me.
Dowling is ... Hmm. Dowling was born in the midst of a down cycle, and with him it's ... The fear and the terror, information overload, that are so much part of his backstory. In his case telepathy, and a wall of information he had no means to process, that drove him mad. And his solution, his way out, was to run, and keep running. (Also, to find someone, a rock, someone concrete on which to base his world, but that obviously didn't happen to me). Dowling ... He did, sort of, succeed. He made a way out. But ... it cost so many people. He chose himself over everyone, maybe even over Isander, and in running from what hurt him, he tore apart a planet. Which is ... Hum. Dowling came from a dark place, in a lot of ways. Dowling was an avatar of ... a lot of fears. Fear of going mad but not mad enough, of being unable to escape, of having the only means of escape damage those close to me. Far less optimistic a mirror than Finn. Maybe even than Seb, in some ways. There are, though, lighter echoes of me, in him. The pragmatic approach to bodies. The fascination with bridging gaps between people. And, of course, there's the fact that Dowling succeeded in bridging the most important gap, between him and the person he loved. Which is a hope, neither fear nor reality, but. Some optimism.
Sebastien ... Again. Sebastien developed throughout a darker phase, and the primary theme with him is, again, fear. Fear, in this case, of things unseen, that mean him harm. Sebastien is blind and fragile, and under threat from every angle (most certainly as he sees it, and to some extent in truth). Which echoes to the way I feel ... more or less all the time, around people. *shrugs uneasily* Sebastien, again, has an element of letting his fear hurt those around him, of letting his weakness damage others (torturer, his past hurting Jan). But Seb ... in some ways, Seb is more optimistic than Dowling. He's more personally trapped than Dowling was, but he ... works through it differently. He ... works around, works through, rather than runs from. In ways that I, personally, can't as yet. Through favours, and friendships, and tactical acquaintanceships. Which ... is an optimistic thing, I think. A posited method, at least, however grim and mercenary it seems. Sebastien, for all his fragility and weakness and fear, and the darkness of his past, is working towards something. And, perhaps, is just enough of a survivor to manage it. Heh. I can, perhaps, hope that enough of that echoes back.
Those three are the strongest potential mirrors of me in my current writing, the closest to 'me' characters. In all likelihood, because they were designed as such. They were initially roleplay characters, after all, heads I would have to live in rather intimately for quite a while. Perhaps not so surprising they should have carried over rather more of me than most. Heh. Though, even with that, they're not ... not me-me. Just ... parts of. Heh.
*shrugs* Just ... something interesting to think about, for me. Heh. Just ... pondering. *smiles faintly*
The first are those stories I wrote when I was, shall we say, rather younger. *smiles sheepishly* The early days of Medath, for example, or the Shadow Mage iterations. They were ... basically, your standard fantasy self-insert fics. *grins* You know, the ones you tell yourself/the games you play, where you're the fantasy princess/magess who has a cool name, and magical powers, and who rides a dragon to work, and saves her homeland. That sort of thing. Heh. In the earliest ones, the 'me' character was a powerful person, usually a mage, in charge and protecting what's hers (Evelyn in Medath). Later on, they started to be smaller, often initally captives, struggling to stay alive, but usually still with a 'destiny' (Aea in Medath, the heroine in Shadow Mage) - they were often younger, too. Possibly that was me moving closer to reality, towards characters that were closer to actually me, only cooler, rather than big powerful characters I got to live vicariously through. Heh.
Later again, as I moved more towards universes like the Daks and the Jawburn arc of Medath, the 'me' character starting fading out altogether. Possibly because ... well, when you're creating worlds to escape into, who wants to have them be a mirror? Also, possibly because 'me' is just not really that interesting, as a character, and I was moving into the phase where other people were starting to be the most terrifying, fascinating, and bloody confusing things in existence. The stories started to be less fantasies about 'I am a powerful and/or interesting person', and more about 'look, I totally understand other people, really, I do'. *grins sheepishly* Characters through this period started being ... facets of people and philosophies I found fascinating/inexplicable/interesting.
These later stories also tended to have more characters, and more characters with stories and motives and destinies of their own, rather than one 'main' around which that world revolved. I largely blame Dak Territories for this. It was supposed to just have a main character/messiah around which the rest revolved, and then Meruk happened, and Zen happened, and Raidan, and then Shaiar, and Gallana had reasons for hating Aruk, and Mellanie had reasons for sticking with Gellana, and Raidan turned out to be thoroughly screwed up, and Meruk turned into this man I wanted to snuggle and protect from the world, and in the middle of all this, Beren stopped being the focal point and 'master of the story', and started being more the catalyst that drew all these other stories together. *shrugs* And once you start down that road, it's kinda hard to stop. I mean, throughout later stories, I would have favourites, sure, but very rarely after this would single characters/groups have sole command of the plot, simply because the worlds they were in would interact with that plot, and things would get complicated. Heh. I not only lost the 'me' character, I kinda lost the 'main' character, in the sense of 'person who walks through this world and has it bow to their narrative might', too. *shrugs sheepishly*
However, there is a type of story, much later, that sees the re-emergence of a 'me' character, if not quite in the same form as there was back then. And those stories are, basically, stories based on characters I created for the purposes of roleplaying. *grins sheepishly* We're talking Carogne, Galactic Duality, and Alchemy 'verse, basically. Two of which were born from characters I played on musing_way, over on dreamwidth, and the first of which was born when my sister asked me to help her design a (short-lived) RP forum on fictionpress.
Of my currently active stories, there are, I think, three characters that are recognisably (at least from my own POV) versions of me. They are, in order of descending optimism:
- Finn Finicky, from Alchemy 'verse
- Dowling, from Galactic Duality
- Sebastien, from Carogne
Finn is the most optimistic of my current mirrors. For him, it's the 'reading' he does, the delving through the layers of the world, that echoes back to me. It's his fascination with the way things work, the way he loves being able to see, to a level of vision, the layers underneath the world. That only happens to me on the heights of a cycle, and usually only just before I crash (hence why, in Finn's world, it's so dangerous), but it happens. Literally to the level of visions. Finn's an optimistic mirror because Finn has managed to build a functioning life. He has a job (multiple jobs, really, but the second wasn't his choice, and the crafts thing is more of a hobby), doing kinda what I want to do (librarian), and aside from getting drafted into police work and politics through no fault of his own, he more or less works as a person. An antisocial, occasionally bitter person, but a person. Heh. He's not quite me, no more than any of them are exactly me, but he bears quite a bit of resemblence to me.
Dowling is ... Hmm. Dowling was born in the midst of a down cycle, and with him it's ... The fear and the terror, information overload, that are so much part of his backstory. In his case telepathy, and a wall of information he had no means to process, that drove him mad. And his solution, his way out, was to run, and keep running. (Also, to find someone, a rock, someone concrete on which to base his world, but that obviously didn't happen to me). Dowling ... He did, sort of, succeed. He made a way out. But ... it cost so many people. He chose himself over everyone, maybe even over Isander, and in running from what hurt him, he tore apart a planet. Which is ... Hum. Dowling came from a dark place, in a lot of ways. Dowling was an avatar of ... a lot of fears. Fear of going mad but not mad enough, of being unable to escape, of having the only means of escape damage those close to me. Far less optimistic a mirror than Finn. Maybe even than Seb, in some ways. There are, though, lighter echoes of me, in him. The pragmatic approach to bodies. The fascination with bridging gaps between people. And, of course, there's the fact that Dowling succeeded in bridging the most important gap, between him and the person he loved. Which is a hope, neither fear nor reality, but. Some optimism.
Sebastien ... Again. Sebastien developed throughout a darker phase, and the primary theme with him is, again, fear. Fear, in this case, of things unseen, that mean him harm. Sebastien is blind and fragile, and under threat from every angle (most certainly as he sees it, and to some extent in truth). Which echoes to the way I feel ... more or less all the time, around people. *shrugs uneasily* Sebastien, again, has an element of letting his fear hurt those around him, of letting his weakness damage others (torturer, his past hurting Jan). But Seb ... in some ways, Seb is more optimistic than Dowling. He's more personally trapped than Dowling was, but he ... works through it differently. He ... works around, works through, rather than runs from. In ways that I, personally, can't as yet. Through favours, and friendships, and tactical acquaintanceships. Which ... is an optimistic thing, I think. A posited method, at least, however grim and mercenary it seems. Sebastien, for all his fragility and weakness and fear, and the darkness of his past, is working towards something. And, perhaps, is just enough of a survivor to manage it. Heh. I can, perhaps, hope that enough of that echoes back.
Those three are the strongest potential mirrors of me in my current writing, the closest to 'me' characters. In all likelihood, because they were designed as such. They were initially roleplay characters, after all, heads I would have to live in rather intimately for quite a while. Perhaps not so surprising they should have carried over rather more of me than most. Heh. Though, even with that, they're not ... not me-me. Just ... parts of. Heh.
*shrugs* Just ... something interesting to think about, for me. Heh. Just ... pondering. *smiles faintly*
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