Sun-shiny day
Apr. 6th, 2006 08:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elabyThe weather today is the absolute opposite of what it was the last time I was in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caitirin's library with a laptop, which was Tuesday. That day, it was miserable: cold and dark and driving rain, which gave me weather-associated memories that I couldn't place. Today, it's even brighter than it would be if it were just normally sunny, because it snowed last night. We probably got an inch, if even that, but it was the kind with ice under it (which made it a bitch to scrape the car off but is absolutely gorgeous otherwise). So the trees are all coated with a layer of snow-and-ice, which turns all the branches of the leafless ones white, and lays on the evergreens like icing. The sky is a pale but unbroken blue, and driving in to school, with the sun beaming through the icy branches and lighting up the white-limbed trees on the other side of the road, was an experience. Right now, there's a melting tree outside the window where I'm sitting, and with the sun on the other side of it, it sparkles like the whole thing was made of cut glass.
So before buckling down to do homework this morning, I decided to finish redoing the post that the internet ate on Tuesday. I was surprised at how long it actually turned out in Word (2 1/4 pages) and I feel more justified that I was upset over its vanishing. So here it is, the continuation of why I'm making some of my previously-vampiric characters simply immortal, and leaving some of them as vampires.
Note: I would never want to make people think that I think ANYone making vampire characters is bad or stupid or anything like that. This is just somethingcaitirin and I decided, mostly because of certain associations we have with the era of our vampire-fangirlishiness. That out of the way...
At least in retyping this, I can restructure it so that my rationalization bit goes at the beginning rather than at the end, where I had it in the original post as an afterthought.caitirin and I decided to make some of our vampire characters just immortals instead of vampires because, first of all, we were forgetting to take into consideration their vampiric aspects (blood drinking, only able to come out at night, etc), and second of all, the extent of vampire-fangirliness we had is frankly pretty embarrassing. I was torn because while I do feel now that my making vampire characters was kind of silly and their being vampires is superfluous, some of the characters I created had histories that were so intrinsically linked with their vampireness that I would have to do a lot of unwanted changes in order to make them immortal. Hence, some of them are staying vampires.
Simon, for example, has a lot of important character traits that revolve around his being a vampire, such as his dislike for being called "dead" or "undead" and the fact that, before we came up with the whole Sun Serum thing, he really missed seeing the sun. Also, being turned into a vampire was a pivotal point in Simon's life, unlike Mei, who was born one. Simon's life is very easily divided into before becoming a vampire and after becoming a vampire (he'd object to "alive" and "dead").
He grew up on a farm in Missouri in the 1850's, and joined the Confederate Army sometime during the Civil War. He deserted the January before the war ended. In the aftermath of the war, he robbed trains and led a gang. After a handful of years doing that, his younger brother (who had begun tagging along with his gang, despite Simon's best efforts to keep him out of trouble) was killed in a dispute between gangs. When that happened, Simon decided to take up something less dangerous andgave up this life of crime became a snake-oil salesman. Unlike most of my other vampire characters, he was fairly far into adulthood when he was turned – he was around 35. After years of selling dubious remedies, Simon was turned into a vampire by someone who had been stalking him since the war. He had pissed off this person, a Creole vampire named Carmen, when he and Simon were in rival gangs and Simon showed up at a train Carmen was planning to rob and stole his heist. Carmen wanted to get back at him by turning him into a vampire, but it backfired, because Simon wasn't broken and despairing as Carmen had planned. He adapted. They lived together while the adapting was going on, in a relationship of the "I would so kill you if I didn't need you to survive" sort.
Because all of these things are really central to Simon's character, I couldn't take them away and just make him immortal. He had to have that turning point where he became something else. Also,caitirin and _melisande_ and I did this whole Sun Serum plot where some scientists created a substance that would allow vampires to withstand the sun. Simon's first sight of the sun after 120 years was something I don't want to make obsolete.
I had decided to make Soria into just an immortal rather than a vampire. She had some important vampire-centric traits, such as the fact that she was turned after nearly being burnt at the stake (she was Protestant during the reign of Queen Mary), which explained why she had darkened skin but wasn't crispy like Shishio. I figured I could just write that off as many years of healing, and that she'd been rescued from the stake in the same way, but was frozen by the trauma at that age (which can happen in our immortal canon). I also didn't want to bother with having to deal with her not being able to go out in the daytime. She's married to Alex now, a mortal, and they have a daughter. I wanted them to have more regular lives, even if Soria will outlive Alex eventually (we're just not thinking about that yet).
Then I remembered this post. Soria made other vampires, characters who are totally tiny little NPC-types but who I love anyway. If she were only an immortal, she couldn't really be a coven leader, and she certainly couldn't have made Brad and Janey, both who she rescued from certain death in London (Brad from the plague and fires of 1666 and Janey from the rubble of a WWII blitz). And I really like their dynamic together, the three of them, so I didn't want to take that away. I doubt I'll be writing anything more with them anyway. So Soria is going to stay a vampire, and perhaps we'll just say she took the Sun Serum to be able to go out during the day, and maybe that her children aren't vampires but inherit the immortality or something. With them it doesn’t matter SO much, because we’d only be playing with them in OOC-land, through IMs and stuff. Probably no serious writing.
So lastly, I was trying to think of whether I even HAD any more vampire characters. And now we come to Nicodemus. You probably didn’t even know he was a vampire. I certainly haven’t made it obvious from the stuff I’ve posted about him. When I was trying to decide about him, I realized the difference between my reasons for making these characters vampires in the first place. With all of the others, Mei especially, I wanted the historical settings and the immortality. That was really why I made them vampires. But with Nicodemus, who exists in a not-quite-Earth parallel reality, he has none of that historical context. The important vampiric elements with him are the blood – drinking it and spilling it – and the fact that he was changed from a human into something different. When I started conceptualizing him, I thought I would make up my own “vampire mythology.” But now that the idea of “vampire” kind of makes me cringe – only because of how silly I was back in my vampire fangirl phase – I want to change him to something else without taking away the blood images that are important to his character. So I’ve decided that with him, I’ll just create some kind of mythology for his story to fit into, probably something dealing with demons or likewise. This way, he could have vampiric attributes but not be an actual vampire – he was a daywalker to begin with, so I never had to worry about the sunlight problem. The important thing with him is the act of transformation, which doesn’t necessarily have to be a “vampire” transformation. And after all, vampires aren’t the only people who drink blood. Look at the Nibelungs, for instance.
Phew.
caitirin's library with a laptop, which was Tuesday. That day, it was miserable: cold and dark and driving rain, which gave me weather-associated memories that I couldn't place. Today, it's even brighter than it would be if it were just normally sunny, because it snowed last night. We probably got an inch, if even that, but it was the kind with ice under it (which made it a bitch to scrape the car off but is absolutely gorgeous otherwise). So the trees are all coated with a layer of snow-and-ice, which turns all the branches of the leafless ones white, and lays on the evergreens like icing. The sky is a pale but unbroken blue, and driving in to school, with the sun beaming through the icy branches and lighting up the white-limbed trees on the other side of the road, was an experience. Right now, there's a melting tree outside the window where I'm sitting, and with the sun on the other side of it, it sparkles like the whole thing was made of cut glass.So before buckling down to do homework this morning, I decided to finish redoing the post that the internet ate on Tuesday. I was surprised at how long it actually turned out in Word (2 1/4 pages) and I feel more justified that I was upset over its vanishing. So here it is, the continuation of why I'm making some of my previously-vampiric characters simply immortal, and leaving some of them as vampires.
Note: I would never want to make people think that I think ANYone making vampire characters is bad or stupid or anything like that. This is just something
caitirin and I decided, mostly because of certain associations we have with the era of our vampire-fangirlishiness. That out of the way...At least in retyping this, I can restructure it so that my rationalization bit goes at the beginning rather than at the end, where I had it in the original post as an afterthought.
caitirin and I decided to make some of our vampire characters just immortals instead of vampires because, first of all, we were forgetting to take into consideration their vampiric aspects (blood drinking, only able to come out at night, etc), and second of all, the extent of vampire-fangirliness we had is frankly pretty embarrassing. I was torn because while I do feel now that my making vampire characters was kind of silly and their being vampires is superfluous, some of the characters I created had histories that were so intrinsically linked with their vampireness that I would have to do a lot of unwanted changes in order to make them immortal. Hence, some of them are staying vampires.Simon, for example, has a lot of important character traits that revolve around his being a vampire, such as his dislike for being called "dead" or "undead" and the fact that, before we came up with the whole Sun Serum thing, he really missed seeing the sun. Also, being turned into a vampire was a pivotal point in Simon's life, unlike Mei, who was born one. Simon's life is very easily divided into before becoming a vampire and after becoming a vampire (he'd object to "alive" and "dead").
He grew up on a farm in Missouri in the 1850's, and joined the Confederate Army sometime during the Civil War. He deserted the January before the war ended. In the aftermath of the war, he robbed trains and led a gang. After a handful of years doing that, his younger brother (who had begun tagging along with his gang, despite Simon's best efforts to keep him out of trouble) was killed in a dispute between gangs. When that happened, Simon decided to take up something less dangerous and
Because all of these things are really central to Simon's character, I couldn't take them away and just make him immortal. He had to have that turning point where he became something else. Also,
caitirin and _melisande_ and I did this whole Sun Serum plot where some scientists created a substance that would allow vampires to withstand the sun. Simon's first sight of the sun after 120 years was something I don't want to make obsolete.I had decided to make Soria into just an immortal rather than a vampire. She had some important vampire-centric traits, such as the fact that she was turned after nearly being burnt at the stake (she was Protestant during the reign of Queen Mary), which explained why she had darkened skin but wasn't crispy like Shishio. I figured I could just write that off as many years of healing, and that she'd been rescued from the stake in the same way, but was frozen by the trauma at that age (which can happen in our immortal canon). I also didn't want to bother with having to deal with her not being able to go out in the daytime. She's married to Alex now, a mortal, and they have a daughter. I wanted them to have more regular lives, even if Soria will outlive Alex eventually (we're just not thinking about that yet).
Then I remembered this post. Soria made other vampires, characters who are totally tiny little NPC-types but who I love anyway. If she were only an immortal, she couldn't really be a coven leader, and she certainly couldn't have made Brad and Janey, both who she rescued from certain death in London (Brad from the plague and fires of 1666 and Janey from the rubble of a WWII blitz). And I really like their dynamic together, the three of them, so I didn't want to take that away. I doubt I'll be writing anything more with them anyway. So Soria is going to stay a vampire, and perhaps we'll just say she took the Sun Serum to be able to go out during the day, and maybe that her children aren't vampires but inherit the immortality or something. With them it doesn’t matter SO much, because we’d only be playing with them in OOC-land, through IMs and stuff. Probably no serious writing.
So lastly, I was trying to think of whether I even HAD any more vampire characters. And now we come to Nicodemus. You probably didn’t even know he was a vampire. I certainly haven’t made it obvious from the stuff I’ve posted about him. When I was trying to decide about him, I realized the difference between my reasons for making these characters vampires in the first place. With all of the others, Mei especially, I wanted the historical settings and the immortality. That was really why I made them vampires. But with Nicodemus, who exists in a not-quite-Earth parallel reality, he has none of that historical context. The important vampiric elements with him are the blood – drinking it and spilling it – and the fact that he was changed from a human into something different. When I started conceptualizing him, I thought I would make up my own “vampire mythology.” But now that the idea of “vampire” kind of makes me cringe – only because of how silly I was back in my vampire fangirl phase – I want to change him to something else without taking away the blood images that are important to his character. So I’ve decided that with him, I’ll just create some kind of mythology for his story to fit into, probably something dealing with demons or likewise. This way, he could have vampiric attributes but not be an actual vampire – he was a daywalker to begin with, so I never had to worry about the sunlight problem. The important thing with him is the act of transformation, which doesn’t necessarily have to be a “vampire” transformation. And after all, vampires aren’t the only people who drink blood. Look at the Nibelungs, for instance.
Phew.
