#jamesabart

i once got an ending of a game spoiled for me so CASUALLY and i was sad for the rest of the day. THEY TOLD ME THE KILLER OF A WHOLE MURDER MYSTERY LIKE EVERYONE KNOWS????? why would you expect everyone to KNOW THE SECRET

AH GOSH I AM SUCH A STINGY GRUMP ABOUT SPOILERS i just cannot. it's like i have blacklisted my new games in their entirety just so i can make as sure as possible that i dont see something i dont want to see. which, of course, is more my responsibility than someone else's anyway (i can't expect everyone to just NOT blog about games, obviously!) but man when people go directly into your inbox and tell you spoilers it's like noooo NOOOOOO YOU DIDNT HAVE TO DO THAT THAT WAS PRETTY RUDE

and then theres situations where sometimes someone directly tells you a spoiler but they didnt realize you didnt know that and i doNT KNOW WHAT  TO DO ABOUT THOSE BC ON ONE HAND I DONT KNOW HOW IM SUPPOSED TO EVADE A SPOILER THAT WAS SENT TO ME IN AN ASK BUT ON THE OTHER HAND I DONT KNOW HOW I CAN EXPECT PEOPLE  TO ***ALWAYS*** WATCH THEIR FEET IN MY INBOX

dude man my family is a bizarre mash up of potty-mouthed we-were-kind-of-sort-of-catholic-once folk we’re ALL ABOUT CHRISTMAS. and even if i wasn’t i don’t take offense to someone saying merry christmas or any of the other end-of-year-time-ish holidays because u know no matter what you say youre basically wishing me a good day or collection of days so i appreciate that!!! and i wish you one too! uvu

oh man!!! ok so real quickly: i really hate how so many YA stories (or at least all the ones i’ve read/heard of) basically don’t talk about the parents of the characters at all like wOW THAT IS JUST SO BORING so i want very much to have my character’s parents be defined, even if i can’t always make them relevant or even fit all the information i have on them into the story. thE POINT IS THEY ARE REAL CHARACTERS AND NOT CARDBOARD CUTOUTS TO BE PERCHED IN DOORWAYS AS THEY WAVE THEIR CHILDREN OFF TO THEIR ADVENTURES.

Sherry Brie is Ava’s mother. she’s a freelance engineer that builds and fixes airships (steampunk-fantasy airships, that is) and other such things both for sport and work. the world Sherry and Ava live is really restricting for reasons i don’t quite think i should get into—but basically, the only way you’re going to see anything beyond the city you were born in is if you land a job working on trading ships or are wealthy enough to afford the luxury of a commercial airship or, even more implausibly, your own private (and authorized) ship. so either you spend an outrageous fortune and go wherever you want or you take the “beggars can’t be choosers” route and get a job delivering goods to traders, which usually means you’re restricted to 2-3 cities maximum, and you don’t get to see much of any of them. and—well, there’s also the illegal means, such as stowing away…

Sherry didn’t like any of those options. she loved her daughter and her husband, but to be honest, i think she’s kind of neglectful as a parent. she poured her soul into building her own one-man airship—an extremely daunting task in her world, especially given that she’s never had much money in her life, which means she had to go through a lifetime of trial, error, time and the patience of her husband to learn to even BUILD a flying machine, let alone find the parts (including all the parts she didn’t need or needed duplicates of to try again with) and then obtain them. everything else was second place to this project of hers—and while i don’t think it’s wrong of her to follow her dreams, i think the way she handled it—making promises and then dismissing those very promises in favor of what she wanted and that alone—was neglectful.

she managed to finish the thing when Ava was young—maybe 5-6? she set off to see the world with a well-meant goodbye to her family. it’s sort of hard to explain, because i think it was bad of her to do it, but i don’t really want to portray it in a negative light. in fact, it’s not portrayed in a negative light—Ava, even at the age of 19, has never looked back on that memory as hurtful or neglectful. she sees it as her mother accomplishing something the world would tell you is impossible, and to Ava, it rooted this belief in her mind that if THAT wasn’t actually impossible, then how can she believe anything else is impossible? it ends up actually benefiting Ava a lot, because a lot of Ava’s decisions, beliefs and personality RELIES on that moment in her life. so when when it gets discussed in the story, it’s almost always described fondly. but when i really look at it, and i think when anyone really looks at it, it was actually a pretty crappy thing for her mom to do? just up and abandon her family like that? Ava’s dad thinks so, but even he’s not really “mad” at her. he’s disappointed, feels pretty forgotten, but if you heard him talk about her, he really just missed her and loved her. i don’t really know, when i wrote down all that stuff about Ava’s parents for the first time, if there was ever a message i was trying to convey through these characters. honestly, it just happened that way. i guess it’s a pretty good example of how romanticizing can really murk something up if you forget or ignore the facts surrounding it?

her father, Ryan, is a less developed. the current story is: he worked for a woman named Pippa Lane at a tailor shop before he got sick a few years after Sherry left. when he couldn’t work anymore, Pippa agreed to let Ava work for her in his place, since few other places would really offer enough work for Ava to take care of herself and her dad. she was probably 12-14 at that point? eventually, Ryan died. Ava still works for Pippa—or “Ms. Pippa,” as she’s been calling her since always.

Pippa is basically Ava’s third parent of sorts. she’s a cute lil old lady who values proper ladylike things, while Ava’s a little, uh, less ladylike. they like each other a lot and compromise though—Pippa puts up with some of Ava’s unseemly behaviors, and in turn, Ava acts a little more proper at work. Pippa also has a spare bedroom that Ava stays in sometimes, but Ava has a tendency to sleep anywhere she can around town because, again, her mother’s adventurism really set a spark off in Ava, who likes to explore the city over and over and over again.

but that’s why Ava can’t read. her parents couldn’t (which couldn’t possibly have been easy for an engineer… i guess that explains why she was only freelance, haha) and didn’t have the money or means to teach her. realistically, i think Ava can read a LITTLE, because Ben can read.

which is because BEN’S parents are actually probably one of the wealthier families in the city. not wealthy enough to afford those luxury cruises, mind you, but wealthy. i’m still working them out because i’m still working out Ben’s backstory for the most part, but his parents are both really nice and loving, even if they all sometimes get too busy to tell each other they love them. when Ben was possessed by Gavin, he was absolutely mortified. being jinxed is a big deal, especially in smaller towns like Ben and Ava’s, where they don’t have anyone capable of performing an exorcism. on top of a lot of other shit Ben would be forced to deal with, his family would suffer a huge blow to their reputation if word got out about their jinxed son. he was probably pretty worried they’d resent him if they found out about him, but he was more worried about burdening them.

within a few days though, he was persuaded by Ava to go back to his house and tell them what was happening. his parents were really supportive of him and swore they’d do whatever they could to help, even though exorcisms and traveling to other cities and all the rest of it were well beyond what his family could afford. because this would really badly effect their image (which they didn’t care about and Ben knew they didn’t), Ben decided himself that he wanted to find another way than with their help, so he basically runs away and him and Ava proceed to make use of the “illegal” way of seeing new cities. his parents are looking for him though because they know exactly what he’s doing and they think it’s dumb and Ben’s dumb and it’s a big stupid mess actually. but if Ben doesn’t do it his family will kill their reputation and PROBABLY wind up bankrupt and Ben just doesn’t want to be responsible for that and is a stupid kid with stupid ideas.

ho dang ok let’s see uhhh i’ll only list actively relevant characters because otherwise this is going to take actual eons haha.

from one story is Ava Brie, Ben Colt and Gavin, who i’ve mentioned before. in a nutshell, Gavin was dying and shoddily possessed Ben, which resulted only in partial control of a certain portion of Ben’s body. they’re now stuck together because Gavin’s own body is dead. Ben and Ava are compromising with Gavin. the deal as it stands is Ava and Ben will find a way to remove Gavin’s spirit from Ben WITHOUT a standard exorcism (which would kill Gavin) or else Gavin will kill Ben. :Y

i don’t know about important or visible, but one of the things i particularly like about Ava is A) she has a revolver and B) she can’t read.

as for Ben, his left eye is yellow, which is common in jinxes—or, people who are possessed by demons. i’ve always liked the concept that your eyes are the windows to your heart/soul/whatever, and the idea here is that when a demon such as Gavin possesses you, it corrupts your soul. therefore, you can see the corruption in a jinx’s eyes—but only the left in Ben’s case, because Gavin doesn’t have complete control of Ben’s whole body and most of his control is in Ben’s left arm and leftmost torso, as well as a portion of the left side of Ben’s head. which means Gavin can randomly wink at people and that is a hilarious thought.

as for Gavin, his now-dead body resembled some mashup between a big cat, a goat and a bat? they call themselves gremlins, but humans named them demons for pretty self-explanatory reasons. some key/favorite traits are their glowing gold eyes, which they use as weapons because demons’s eyes are really susceptible to light and actually can’t see very well anyway, so eye contact is a big fucking deal for demons. it’s threatening, like barring your teeth or balling your hands into fists. they also have what i call manes, which function a lot like normal manes and protect the demon’s neck from damage. a lot of demons actually have a self of presentation though and take measures to trim their manes into various hairstyles. they also have horns that start from the top of the forehead (probably on the hairline?) and, depending on the length, can loop all the way around to underneath the jaw. they also have really long tails that resemble lion tails because lions are cool. and lion legs/feet too. because lions are cool. adults are often at least an easy foot or two taller than the average human. females also have horns and manes. their manes tend to grow much faster and are actually stronger—maybe because due to the speed, the mane is technically younger and thus can get much longer than a male’s before it dies and falls out? a lot of mothers use this as an advantage to protect their young, either as a sort of blanket or as something to hang onto when she carries them on her back to travel.

there’s also Jordan Bradley and Emilia Griffin, who may or may not have a story in the same universe as Ben and Ava’s. Bradley’s your classic pissy middle-aged white man who has past issues and a job in the world’s military. because we needed more of those. (no it’s because i fucking wanted one bye.) Griffin is his new lieutenant who replaced his recently deceased partner. they fight a lot but Bradley predictably is determined to protect his people at all costs and Griffin is determined to prove she’s right about him being a whiny pissbaby with too many grudges and helping him overcome all that before she lets him die. some serious and hopefully unpredictable shit happens to them. their story also might include some other characters i have who are based at least vaguely on Greek mythological figures and share basically no similarities to them except names. speaking of them, i still ship them like fuck. Hephaestus and Aphrodite are so fucking important.

i also have another character for a third story. he can’t decide if his last name is Griffin or McQueen but he’s been leaning toward the latter ever since Emilia stole the name Griffin. he’s a quarterback (HA HA HA WHAT DID YOU EXPECT) for a high school american football team called the Firebirds. he ends up being the protagonist in a fantasy story about magic and shit because that’s the kind of stories i write. he’s going to combine his rad QB passing skills with throwing fireballs and it’s gonna be cool and the magic users are gonna be like WHOOAAAAA. i don’t know how well this story will work out, honestly, but i’m really pumped about giving it my best fucking shot. experimentation is the fun of being a human being dammit. experimentation is a great thing.

i've said it before, but i think it's really important to always start your character with a purpose, whether that be a fictional or practical purpose. for example, i have one character named Paige whose purpose is to be a guide character to the protagonist. she has a very technical purpose, as i need her to be able to explain the world and establish the protagonist's goals for him, because he's not usually quite so sure what he has to do to make things happen. the protagonist's sister, Annie, has a much more fictional purpose, which is to be the source of the entire world the protagonist needs to save. both of them are extremely important, but Annie is for fictional reasons you can see in broad daylight, while Paige's importance is much more covered up because you can't let your technical parts of any good creation be exposed, so you dress it up as something else while still keeping the functionality in tact.

characters shouldn't be made "just because." they tend to be boring and pretty all over the place, because there's no foundation to build from—their "foundation" being their purpose! once you have a purpose, you can start building around it until a character happens.

working new ideas into a character can be really complicated. sometimes the idea you've got fits perfectly, because it actually explains or fixes things previously ignored or broken. other times, the idea can add a whole NEW layer to the character, even if it doesn't change or fix any of the pre-existing parts of the character.

and sometimes, you have an idea you really like and it's like fitting a square in a circule-shaped hole.

there needs to be some give to accommodate the weird new shape that doesn't fit anywhere naturally. some things need to change or go, sometimes additional things need to be added, etc.

i think my first advice in a situation like that would be to remember what the PURPOSE of the character is, and then determine if the idea you have benefits that purpose in any way. if it doesn't, you're probably adding some unnecessary excess to the character that doesn't need to be there. it might be better off to leave it as a fun idea you like to play with sometimes instead of a legitimate thing that happens or simply is.

if it DOES benefit the purpose, there's probably a way to make it fit. it can help to consider what the idea is and identify the most problematic part of it—as in, what makes it not fit the most, then either remove that part or start experimenting with ways to modify it. if you fix it and the idea still doesn't fit, identify the next most problematic part of the idea.

my old homestuck kid Jess informed me one day that she wanted to play football. i tried to tell her this was a little unlikely, given the state of the world as it is, but she didn't like that and told me to make it work. she said she wanted to be a quarterback, and she's definitely smart enough to be a quarterback, but even though i am basically a fantasy writer, i don't like to flat out ignore reality, and in reality, girls aren't normally allowed to be QBs or football players in general because people think they're too weak and can't take hits. i wasn't about to give Jess an entire high school football team that didn't share this general belief, because that'd be really convenient and, frankly, a little unrealistic.

so there's my problem—Jess wants to be a quarterback, but people don't think girls can take the hits quarterbacks take. so i have to start meddling with the idea until it looks enough like a circle that i can fit it in the circle-shaped hole.

i ended up doing this by exploiting Jess's near self-destructive stubbornness. she refused to take no as an answer—she KNEW she was good enough to be a QB on the football team, and she would not let the coach turn her down just because she was a girl. but he wouldn't let her play QB or even put her on as second string, so instead, i gave her a good kicking foot. this allowed the coach to compromise with Jess by making her a punter.

and PUNTERS are allowed to play as quarterbacks—actually, i'm pretty sure anybody can play as quarterback, but i digress.

this effectively solved my argument with Jess. i managed to keep true to the fact that girls are considered too soft to take hits in football, but still fit Jess into the circle hole by making her a punter. this puts her on the team, like she wants, but also allows her to fake punts and field goals (punters often hold the snapped ball for the field goal kicker) by taking the snap and assuming the role of quarterback long enough to make a play and convert a 4th down or make a touchdown.