LIVEJOURNAL, HOOAH! WHAT IS IT GOOOOD FOR, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING (except memes)
So loremjay , goatpox , and gnewarned all did this until I gave in myself.
Reading this over again, WOW it is long and I really don't expect even my decent friends to read all of it. But it was fun to fill out, as tends to be the case for most memes that let you talk about yourself. And isn't that what Livejournal is for.
First, let me introduce my stories cos I barely talk about them.
The Czar story, and though I'm not in love with the name, sometimes I call it Devil's Favorite Sons. It's basically a plot I've carved out the lives of a bunch of serial killers. As if I haven't reminded y'all enough, I worked on these characters for Artslam last summer and that's the place to look for a lot of the relevant information.
Now, the story I'm grooming for next year:
Space Sickness is DEFINITELY not my new kinda-sci-fi story's real name, but almost none of the characters have names yet (I refer to them by their functions in my notes: Rebel Kid, General, Professor, Feminist Catlady) so a title is hardly a top priority. It started with me trying to string together a bunch of half-imagined recurring ideas from my sketchbooks. It's becoming more complex all the time, involving 3 planets and a growing list of subplots. This story can only turn out one of two ways: really awesome or really terrible.
And some minor ones I came up with in high school and want to fix up someday: Bugcat's origin story, Priest 85, Space Kitties, Jesus Sells Vacuums, John & Vanessa.
1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.
DFS, because it's just one big guilty pleasure. Whenever I run out of seriousness, I circle back to Al being cool/a jerk/eating people. It's writing R&R.
2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
My first instinct is to make boys. And my poor girls have all ended up excluded from the boy's club that is the Main Character Circle. Usually when I do have girls in my stories, their purpose is 1) to be abused (Al's victims, Margaret), 2) to have sex with ( Alice and S'Zorra), 3) to be a token girl character who is mad about something (Feminist Catlady).
3. How do you come up with names for characters (and for places if you’re writing about fictional places)?
Al, Xavier and Jack have been named for like 6 years. Otherwise I just pick them at random-- if I call a character by a name enough times, it'll eventually fit, right?
The one character from SS with a real name is Sealcoat, and I don't know if that's his first or last. I took it from a yard sign for a political candidate I've never heard of before or since. I think it fits because he's is a self-designed sociopath who works for an ad agency. He's great at manipulating people... Slippery, if you will.
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
I've been coming up with characters since forever, but the process of writing stories is just recently making sense to me. I had a lot of trouble with cause-and-effect, for some reason. Most of my early stuff was really simple and never had endings.
I used to just take my 100 cat characters and anthro Pokemon and say they lived together in a huge house on an island. In addition to using them for a lot of grade school writing projects, I once started a comic where stick figures infested the house and everyone had to help fight them.
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
IF IT COUNTS, Bugcat is youngest. Though I've never calculated its exact age, it shouldn't live longer than a normal cat. The oldest is Xavier, who's about 65 or so. I don't think I want my characters to age in real time, more like "Al was born during a time that CLOSELY RESEMBLES the mid-seventies", and the time the current story takes place in is never specifically written down, it's just assumed that he's around 35 years old.
Oldest existing is Al. That fucker popped up around the sixth grade. I'm not sure who the youngest is, because I just came up with a bunch of characters for SS and I'm not sure how well I can make them fit the story yet.
6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol’ pen and paper?
I took two lecture classes, Sociology and Contemporary Literature, specifically to sit in and get writing done. I can apparently only work on stuff for myself when I'm not supposed to. (It's working out great, by the way.)
I write by hand because I... have... a "computer problem". If you give me the choice between writing and refreshing websites, apparently I will always pick the latter.
7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?
It doesn't really matter to me whether there's music playing or not. Anything violent, intense and "sexy" is very inspiring for working on the Czars, obviously.
I also have a small, secret collection of Matchbox 20/Rob Thomas songs for whenever I want to get inside Al's stupid head. THIS IS ALL I CAN TAKE, THIS IS HOW A BRAIN BREAKS. Mothers, tell your children: give your characters music taste you can handle.
8. What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?
With reading, I'm just... drawn to stories about things I feel like I haven't seen done before. I rarely give superheroes, slasher horror and most fantasy or sci-fi a chance. I'll pick up almost any book that promises monsters (preferably giant ones) and anything related to what I write about (truckers, sadists, the advertising industry) because I'm always looking for inspiration and research.
When I write, I just try to come up with concepts that won't bore me to work on. While I know it's possible to put a unique spin on an overdone subject, I'm not a confident enough writer for that. So I rely on cool general ideas and hope the events and characters inside it will be as interesting.
I'm not sure what genres these would fall under... SS has sci-fi themes, but I'm of the understanding that true sci-fi actually involves researching atoms and junk, and trying to make up fantastic stuff that could sound plausible in real life. And that is not what I want to do.
It just feels like I'm retelling strange and quietly humorous events in monotone. (Imagine my drawings in story form: weird and frowny with a lot of eyebrows in the unamused position.)
DFS is only horrific in its subject matter, not its treatment of the characters. I certainly don't want to get into morality, and trying for horror would be ridiculous because Al isn't really scary. The story is more about what makes him tick, so it's leaning toward the elevated pillar of literary fiction. But only technically, because this is still just a story about a serial killer being terrible.
9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.
Organically and randomly. Except for SS, which is more about me making a plot first and characters later, and then giving them personalities to fit.
10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Every thing from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!
SS is basically made of weird situations. Sealcoat gets chewed out by hairless alien cats, and hired to do PR for a guy he never liked who is now trying to be a superhero. Also he walks past blue monsters every day on the street because this is an alternate universe where the internet was invented like 50 years earlier-- IT'S A LONG STORY(and getting longer).
11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?
AL, ALWAYS. Except it's been frustrating trying to think of how he can learn or be changed. His personality is basically anti-change. He's just a tantrum-throwing little boy in a man's body (which is really what makes him fun), and I'm still working on how a self-important narcissist can convincingly figure out that the world does not revolve around him.
I don't really hate to write any characters, I just see them all as a challenge. They're gears that need some molding to make the story-machine work, and when it works out it's the most rewarding feeling.
Girls are hard as hell to write non-cliches of, though.
12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of world building? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?
SS is the most creative I've been with world-building so far. Like I said, it involves two alien planets plus Earth, and the earlier invention of the internet made a lot of weird stuff happen.
13. What’s your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?
I write what I know, and that's American jerks. I love making up aliens, though, especially making them as functionally non-human as possible. I had a lot of fun with the catpeople. One plot point is that sabretooth fangs are really attractive on girls.
14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
Oh god that's the last thing I think about. Though knowing the basic set-up of the old Czar farmhouse has helped a lot, so maybe I should do more.
15. Mid way question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!
I've been in love with the guys at SomethingAwful for the longest time, though that's hardly a way to write a story (so it's a good thing I never learned how to write like them, hurr hurr).
I dunno, I tend to pay more attention to stories, not authors-- it's so easy for me to not think of the people who create the things I love as real people. This guy is as close to writer worship as I've gotten.
16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? ;)
(I'm completely uninterested in reading or writing about romance. This is why most of my characters end up being either snarky and jaded or aggressively hateful. Most of them are motivated by the good of themselves and little else. It's becoming a recurring theme in all my stories, so maybe I'll just let it be my "thing".)
If it comes to that, though, I see no reason to write out an entire sex scene. Unless something that happens then is important to the story, anyway. Like when Al rape-devour-murders, I think it's important to describe a few of those. A reader would need to see just how much Al loves causing pain, that it's a truly fulfilling experience for him.
17. Favorite protagonist and why!
AL.
18. Favorite antagonist and why!
AL. (He is pretty much his own antagonist sometimes.)
19. Favorite minor that decided to shove him self into the spotlight and why!
Oh Jack. You were only supposed to show up occasionally but I love your warm-but-creepy personality and your gunplay fetish and your square head.
20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?
Al reeling in his victims with kindly trucker charm; Xavier and Jack hanging out together; Al and Xavier every time they fight.
21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?
Al will forever be Xavier's little boy.
22. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story-from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?
HHHHHFFFFHGFHFFFFFHHHHGHGHGHHGHGHGHFGGUUGGHGHHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHA. HHHHHHHHHHHHH. HHHHHHHHHHHHUUUHHHHHHHHHHH. FFFFUUUUHHHHHhhhhhhhnnnnnunnnghghgh aaa aaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaa....
aaaaa... aahahahuhuhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuhhhh... huh.
23. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What’s the most interesting way you’ve killed someone?
If someone needs to die, they die. If you stop thinking of your characters as disposable story-telling tools, you need to take a step back and decide whether you want to write this for you, or for you and the audience.
Most interesting death is probably Henry and Margaret, because they died on the same day. Henry was all "bitch ain't outlivin' me" and bit her neck with his gross yellow tar-coated teeth, then laid down and died of emphysemadeath-supercancer.
24. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.
It would be really impractical to give the Czars pets, because 1) obvious disregard for life, and 2) some animals actually just hate them. SS characters aren't developed enough to have pets yet. Overall I think giving your characters pets can get too cutesy-gimmicky, so I want to make it count.
25. Let’s talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!
YES I DO DRAW THEM HOW DID YOU KNOW. This is my favorite because 1) very few noticeable anatomy muck-ups, and 2) I so rarely get across exactly what the Czars ARE (gross hairy dudes who totally get naked to do terrible things) as effectively as I feel I did here.
I basically love anything anyone ever draws for me. I mean yeah, I have a top five favorites list. And almost all of them are of Al.
26. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.
Oh my god, if appearances mattered no one would go to Jack's dental practice. I kind of make it a joke that people are mildly-but-not-as-much-as-they-should-be bothered by his face. I guess these people are used to most anything after living in my drawings(cry cry).
The Czars' nails (and in the old days of terrible dental hygiene, sharp teeth) are also hilariously easy to explain away.
Bugcat is also obviously creepy, but people DO acknowledge it because you can be less polite to cats. Also it puked a cocoon around a baby once, and no one was happy about that.
In SS, anything goes. Everyone on Earth is familiar with aliens that come in all shapes. There are 3 varieties of civilized "blues" and orange ferals (or "reds") on Planet X. The catpeople rarely leave their planet but sometimes work as mechanics on space ships. Art-wise, I associate SS characters with colors rather vividly in my head, so I think I want them to be monochromatic. Sealcoat strikes me as a blue-violet guy.
27. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there’s nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.
Is being a self-centered psychopath who hides his anger except to express in violence a mental disability.
Glenn is just a sad sack of genetics, which becomes even sadder when he meets Al and decides he wants to be like him. Jack's underbite is one of the reasons he goes into dentistry! And Alan has tiny feet, but that doesn't slow him down much.
There's a character in SS (who I am calling Potassium Guy in my notes) who has something happen to him in his adulthood that makes parts of his body combust when they come in contact with oxygen. That's more awesome than anything, though.
28. Final question! Tag some one! And tell us what you like about that person as a writer and/or about one of his/her characters!
Everyone I know has already done thisssssssss
Reading this over again, WOW it is long and I really don't expect even my decent friends to read all of it. But it was fun to fill out, as tends to be the case for most memes that let you talk about yourself. And isn't that what Livejournal is for.
First, let me introduce my stories cos I barely talk about them.
The Czar story, and though I'm not in love with the name, sometimes I call it Devil's Favorite Sons. It's basically a plot I've carved out the lives of a bunch of serial killers. As if I haven't reminded y'all enough, I worked on these characters for Artslam last summer and that's the place to look for a lot of the relevant information.
Now, the story I'm grooming for next year:
Space Sickness is DEFINITELY not my new kinda-sci-fi story's real name, but almost none of the characters have names yet (I refer to them by their functions in my notes: Rebel Kid, General, Professor, Feminist Catlady) so a title is hardly a top priority. It started with me trying to string together a bunch of half-imagined recurring ideas from my sketchbooks. It's becoming more complex all the time, involving 3 planets and a growing list of subplots. This story can only turn out one of two ways: really awesome or really terrible.
And some minor ones I came up with in high school and want to fix up someday: Bugcat's origin story, Priest 85, Space Kitties, Jesus Sells Vacuums, John & Vanessa.
1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.
DFS, because it's just one big guilty pleasure. Whenever I run out of seriousness, I circle back to Al being cool/a jerk/eating people. It's writing R&R.
2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
My first instinct is to make boys. And my poor girls have all ended up excluded from the boy's club that is the Main Character Circle. Usually when I do have girls in my stories, their purpose is 1) to be abused (Al's victims, Margaret), 2) to have sex with ( Alice and S'Zorra), 3) to be a token girl character who is mad about something (Feminist Catlady).
3. How do you come up with names for characters (and for places if you’re writing about fictional places)?
Al, Xavier and Jack have been named for like 6 years. Otherwise I just pick them at random-- if I call a character by a name enough times, it'll eventually fit, right?
The one character from SS with a real name is Sealcoat, and I don't know if that's his first or last. I took it from a yard sign for a political candidate I've never heard of before or since. I think it fits because he's is a self-designed sociopath who works for an ad agency. He's great at manipulating people... Slippery, if you will.
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
I've been coming up with characters since forever, but the process of writing stories is just recently making sense to me. I had a lot of trouble with cause-and-effect, for some reason. Most of my early stuff was really simple and never had endings.
I used to just take my 100 cat characters and anthro Pokemon and say they lived together in a huge house on an island. In addition to using them for a lot of grade school writing projects, I once started a comic where stick figures infested the house and everyone had to help fight them.
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
IF IT COUNTS, Bugcat is youngest. Though I've never calculated its exact age, it shouldn't live longer than a normal cat. The oldest is Xavier, who's about 65 or so. I don't think I want my characters to age in real time, more like "Al was born during a time that CLOSELY RESEMBLES the mid-seventies", and the time the current story takes place in is never specifically written down, it's just assumed that he's around 35 years old.
Oldest existing is Al. That fucker popped up around the sixth grade. I'm not sure who the youngest is, because I just came up with a bunch of characters for SS and I'm not sure how well I can make them fit the story yet.
6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol’ pen and paper?
I took two lecture classes, Sociology and Contemporary Literature, specifically to sit in and get writing done. I can apparently only work on stuff for myself when I'm not supposed to. (It's working out great, by the way.)
I write by hand because I... have... a "computer problem". If you give me the choice between writing and refreshing websites, apparently I will always pick the latter.
7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?
It doesn't really matter to me whether there's music playing or not. Anything violent, intense and "sexy" is very inspiring for working on the Czars, obviously.
I also have a small, secret collection of Matchbox 20/Rob Thomas songs for whenever I want to get inside Al's stupid head. THIS IS ALL I CAN TAKE, THIS IS HOW A BRAIN BREAKS. Mothers, tell your children: give your characters music taste you can handle.
8. What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?
With reading, I'm just... drawn to stories about things I feel like I haven't seen done before. I rarely give superheroes, slasher horror and most fantasy or sci-fi a chance. I'll pick up almost any book that promises monsters (preferably giant ones) and anything related to what I write about (truckers, sadists, the advertising industry) because I'm always looking for inspiration and research.
When I write, I just try to come up with concepts that won't bore me to work on. While I know it's possible to put a unique spin on an overdone subject, I'm not a confident enough writer for that. So I rely on cool general ideas and hope the events and characters inside it will be as interesting.
I'm not sure what genres these would fall under... SS has sci-fi themes, but I'm of the understanding that true sci-fi actually involves researching atoms and junk, and trying to make up fantastic stuff that could sound plausible in real life. And that is not what I want to do.
It just feels like I'm retelling strange and quietly humorous events in monotone. (Imagine my drawings in story form: weird and frowny with a lot of eyebrows in the unamused position.)
DFS is only horrific in its subject matter, not its treatment of the characters. I certainly don't want to get into morality, and trying for horror would be ridiculous because Al isn't really scary. The story is more about what makes him tick, so it's leaning toward the elevated pillar of literary fiction. But only technically, because this is still just a story about a serial killer being terrible.
9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.
Organically and randomly. Except for SS, which is more about me making a plot first and characters later, and then giving them personalities to fit.
10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Every thing from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!
SS is basically made of weird situations. Sealcoat gets chewed out by hairless alien cats, and hired to do PR for a guy he never liked who is now trying to be a superhero. Also he walks past blue monsters every day on the street because this is an alternate universe where the internet was invented like 50 years earlier-- IT'S A LONG STORY(and getting longer).
11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?
AL, ALWAYS. Except it's been frustrating trying to think of how he can learn or be changed. His personality is basically anti-change. He's just a tantrum-throwing little boy in a man's body (which is really what makes him fun), and I'm still working on how a self-important narcissist can convincingly figure out that the world does not revolve around him.
I don't really hate to write any characters, I just see them all as a challenge. They're gears that need some molding to make the story-machine work, and when it works out it's the most rewarding feeling.
Girls are hard as hell to write non-cliches of, though.
12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of world building? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?
SS is the most creative I've been with world-building so far. Like I said, it involves two alien planets plus Earth, and the earlier invention of the internet made a lot of weird stuff happen.
13. What’s your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?
I write what I know, and that's American jerks. I love making up aliens, though, especially making them as functionally non-human as possible. I had a lot of fun with the catpeople. One plot point is that sabretooth fangs are really attractive on girls.
14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
Oh god that's the last thing I think about. Though knowing the basic set-up of the old Czar farmhouse has helped a lot, so maybe I should do more.
15. Mid way question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!
I've been in love with the guys at SomethingAwful for the longest time, though that's hardly a way to write a story (so it's a good thing I never learned how to write like them, hurr hurr).
I dunno, I tend to pay more attention to stories, not authors-- it's so easy for me to not think of the people who create the things I love as real people. This guy is as close to writer worship as I've gotten.
16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? ;)
(I'm completely uninterested in reading or writing about romance. This is why most of my characters end up being either snarky and jaded or aggressively hateful. Most of them are motivated by the good of themselves and little else. It's becoming a recurring theme in all my stories, so maybe I'll just let it be my "thing".)
If it comes to that, though, I see no reason to write out an entire sex scene. Unless something that happens then is important to the story, anyway. Like when Al rape-devour-murders, I think it's important to describe a few of those. A reader would need to see just how much Al loves causing pain, that it's a truly fulfilling experience for him.
17. Favorite protagonist and why!
AL.
18. Favorite antagonist and why!
AL. (He is pretty much his own antagonist sometimes.)
19. Favorite minor that decided to shove him self into the spotlight and why!
Oh Jack. You were only supposed to show up occasionally but I love your warm-but-creepy personality and your gunplay fetish and your square head.
20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?
Al reeling in his victims with kindly trucker charm; Xavier and Jack hanging out together; Al and Xavier every time they fight.
21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?
Al will forever be Xavier's little boy.
22. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story-from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?
HHHHHFFFFHGFHFFFFFHHHHGHGHGHHGHGHGHFGGUUGGHGHHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHA. HHHHHHHHHHHHH. HHHHHHHHHHHHUUUHHHHHHHHHHH. FFFFUUUUHHHHHhhhhhhhnnnnnunnnghghgh aaa aaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaa....
aaaaa... aahahahuhuhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuhhhh... huh.
23. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What’s the most interesting way you’ve killed someone?
If someone needs to die, they die. If you stop thinking of your characters as disposable story-telling tools, you need to take a step back and decide whether you want to write this for you, or for you and the audience.
Most interesting death is probably Henry and Margaret, because they died on the same day. Henry was all "bitch ain't outlivin' me" and bit her neck with his gross yellow tar-coated teeth, then laid down and died of emphysemadeath-supercancer.
24. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.
It would be really impractical to give the Czars pets, because 1) obvious disregard for life, and 2) some animals actually just hate them. SS characters aren't developed enough to have pets yet. Overall I think giving your characters pets can get too cutesy-gimmicky, so I want to make it count.
25. Let’s talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!
YES I DO DRAW THEM HOW DID YOU KNOW. This is my favorite because 1) very few noticeable anatomy muck-ups, and 2) I so rarely get across exactly what the Czars ARE (gross hairy dudes who totally get naked to do terrible things) as effectively as I feel I did here.
I basically love anything anyone ever draws for me. I mean yeah, I have a top five favorites list. And almost all of them are of Al.
26. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.
Oh my god, if appearances mattered no one would go to Jack's dental practice. I kind of make it a joke that people are mildly-but-not-as-much-as-they-should-be bothered by his face. I guess these people are used to most anything after living in my drawings(cry cry).
The Czars' nails (and in the old days of terrible dental hygiene, sharp teeth) are also hilariously easy to explain away.
Bugcat is also obviously creepy, but people DO acknowledge it because you can be less polite to cats. Also it puked a cocoon around a baby once, and no one was happy about that.
In SS, anything goes. Everyone on Earth is familiar with aliens that come in all shapes. There are 3 varieties of civilized "blues" and orange ferals (or "reds") on Planet X. The catpeople rarely leave their planet but sometimes work as mechanics on space ships. Art-wise, I associate SS characters with colors rather vividly in my head, so I think I want them to be monochromatic. Sealcoat strikes me as a blue-violet guy.
27. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there’s nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.
Is being a self-centered psychopath who hides his anger except to express in violence a mental disability.
Glenn is just a sad sack of genetics, which becomes even sadder when he meets Al and decides he wants to be like him. Jack's underbite is one of the reasons he goes into dentistry! And Alan has tiny feet, but that doesn't slow him down much.
There's a character in SS (who I am calling Potassium Guy in my notes) who has something happen to him in his adulthood that makes parts of his body combust when they come in contact with oxygen. That's more awesome than anything, though.
28. Final question! Tag some one! And tell us what you like about that person as a writer and/or about one of his/her characters!
Everyone I know has already done thisssssssss