alphabet meme responses: part three
gin200168 asked me to ramble about
Abernathy was meant to be a one-shot, one-scene character, but things didn't work out that way.
Abernathy is an original character who I created...God, more than three years ago now, for use in my story "Light from a Dead Star." He was, in my conception, a Marine who had gone through basic training with Mac and who had been stationed with him in Beirut. This was, in part, inspired by the photo in Mac's office that the D.A. comments on in "Officer Blue," and Mac telling him that it had been taken in Beirut in '83. That reference made me go, "Oh SHIT," the second the implications of it clicked into place in my brain, and although we didn't get any real details about his time there until a year and a half later, in "Charge of This Post," it got me started thinking about his time in the Corps, and what the people he knew there might have meant to him.
(This is all blurry for me now, of course; trying to reconstruct the details of a creative process that took place so long ago is, at least for me, guesswork at best. This is part of what led to Abernathy coming into being, but it's not all of it.)
So this came in handy when I started writing "Light from a Dead Star," which was the longest and most complicated story I'd attempted at that point, and in which I found myself with a need to illuminate certain aspects of Mac's past, both to show why he made the choices he did within the story and to show the cyclical nature of his relationships, and maybe to try to find one explanation for why he reacted to Danny in the ways he did, both in the story and in canon.
Thus, Abernathy, who was, in my conception, part of the group of soldiers who we can see posing in front of the chopper in the aforementioned photo, soldiers Mac had been stationed with in Beirut and who he had been close to. As it turned out, once I got deeper into the story, Abernathy wasn't just one of the group; he and Mac were best friends.
They were also lovers.
And the destruction of that relationship -- specifically, the ways in which Mac destroyed it -- along with what happened to Abernathy later on, ended up being key to the story, and to Mac's past. And Abernathy, a good man, loomed large in Mac's secrets, and in his heart and mind, even if he would never admit that to anyone.
So Abernathy became much more important than he was supposed to be originally, and that surprised me. It also surprised me when, later on, I became friends with gin200168 and scarletts_awry (yeah, this is how early on this was; none of us knew each other yet), and they both liked him as much as they did. They even ended up using him in stories of their own, and that was very strange for me, in a good way, seeing a character I had created being taken and fleshed out further, given more depth, by other writers. It was pretty amazing, actually.
This ramble is hard for me to write, to tell the truth. I can write about Abernathy's creation, and about how glad I am that he's taken off the way he has, but I can't really write any analysis of him the way I normally would in a post about a character; I'm too close and I lack the necessary critical distance. It would be an interesting exercise to see someone else who's read the stories he features in do this, though.
In case you've ever wondered, this is the way I picture Abernathy.
I already rambled a little bit about Eureka here when I first started watching the show.
Now, having watched the entire first season, I continue to be utterly charmed by the series. Henry is still my favorite character, and I love the quirky intelligence of the writing. Despite the fact that everyman Jack Carter is our POV character, the scientists of Eureka are treated with respect, as are, I think, science and exploration, and intelligence, in general.
Oh, the show has a good sense of humor about people's foibles, and, in its more serious moments, it doesn't neglect to address the darker possibilities inherent in the scientific process, but it doesn't portray scientific curiosity or intelligence with the derision, or outright fear and loathing, that those qualities are so frequently subjected to in popular culture.
Jack function as our POV, but the show also has respect for the viewpoints of the other characters. Jack's common-sense man-on-the-streets smarts are needed in Eureka, and are important, but so are the book- and experiment-based smarts of the rest of the residents. The show values intelligence, of all stripes, and it also does a very good job of presenting the joy and awe and wonder inherent in learning new things, and in creating those things, and, most of all, in all the wonderful and weird possibilities of the universe.
That sense of joy and wonder, along with the complex characters (no one is a caricature; everyone has unexpected facets to their personalities), is one of my favorite things about the show.
I am so very glad and grateful that gin200168 introduced me to it.
Little Tokyo, here in downtown Los Angeles, is a wonderful place. I had a great time going there on Sunday morning the weekend Gin was here and wandering through all the different shops in Japanese Village Plaza.
I love the fresh peanut butter and chocolate mochi at Fugetsu-Do (founded in 1903!), which is across the street from the Plaza, and I love the Japanese grocery store inside the Plaza, where we bought bento boxes and snacks and tea, and where we also could have gotten gorgeously fresh sushi, or tuna, or teeny-tiny baby octopi.
I love all the little stores where you can buy Japanese toys and stationery and dishware; I love the dishes I picked out in one of them.
I really love my new (and burgeoning) Lucky Cat collection.
I loved the other bakeries we went into, and the ultra-inexpensive pastries we got, and the place that sold the special little red-bean pancakes. One of the things I remember best about the weekend is sitting on the fountain in the middle of the Plaza and eating our pancakes in the sun.
I look forward to going back.
Abernathy was meant to be a one-shot, one-scene character, but things didn't work out that way.
Abernathy is an original character who I created...God, more than three years ago now, for use in my story "Light from a Dead Star." He was, in my conception, a Marine who had gone through basic training with Mac and who had been stationed with him in Beirut. This was, in part, inspired by the photo in Mac's office that the D.A. comments on in "Officer Blue," and Mac telling him that it had been taken in Beirut in '83. That reference made me go, "Oh SHIT," the second the implications of it clicked into place in my brain, and although we didn't get any real details about his time there until a year and a half later, in "Charge of This Post," it got me started thinking about his time in the Corps, and what the people he knew there might have meant to him.
(This is all blurry for me now, of course; trying to reconstruct the details of a creative process that took place so long ago is, at least for me, guesswork at best. This is part of what led to Abernathy coming into being, but it's not all of it.)
So this came in handy when I started writing "Light from a Dead Star," which was the longest and most complicated story I'd attempted at that point, and in which I found myself with a need to illuminate certain aspects of Mac's past, both to show why he made the choices he did within the story and to show the cyclical nature of his relationships, and maybe to try to find one explanation for why he reacted to Danny in the ways he did, both in the story and in canon.
Thus, Abernathy, who was, in my conception, part of the group of soldiers who we can see posing in front of the chopper in the aforementioned photo, soldiers Mac had been stationed with in Beirut and who he had been close to. As it turned out, once I got deeper into the story, Abernathy wasn't just one of the group; he and Mac were best friends.
They were also lovers.
And the destruction of that relationship -- specifically, the ways in which Mac destroyed it -- along with what happened to Abernathy later on, ended up being key to the story, and to Mac's past. And Abernathy, a good man, loomed large in Mac's secrets, and in his heart and mind, even if he would never admit that to anyone.
So Abernathy became much more important than he was supposed to be originally, and that surprised me. It also surprised me when, later on, I became friends with gin200168 and scarletts_awry (yeah, this is how early on this was; none of us knew each other yet), and they both liked him as much as they did. They even ended up using him in stories of their own, and that was very strange for me, in a good way, seeing a character I had created being taken and fleshed out further, given more depth, by other writers. It was pretty amazing, actually.
This ramble is hard for me to write, to tell the truth. I can write about Abernathy's creation, and about how glad I am that he's taken off the way he has, but I can't really write any analysis of him the way I normally would in a post about a character; I'm too close and I lack the necessary critical distance. It would be an interesting exercise to see someone else who's read the stories he features in do this, though.
In case you've ever wondered, this is the way I picture Abernathy.
I already rambled a little bit about Eureka here when I first started watching the show.
Now, having watched the entire first season, I continue to be utterly charmed by the series. Henry is still my favorite character, and I love the quirky intelligence of the writing. Despite the fact that everyman Jack Carter is our POV character, the scientists of Eureka are treated with respect, as are, I think, science and exploration, and intelligence, in general.
Oh, the show has a good sense of humor about people's foibles, and, in its more serious moments, it doesn't neglect to address the darker possibilities inherent in the scientific process, but it doesn't portray scientific curiosity or intelligence with the derision, or outright fear and loathing, that those qualities are so frequently subjected to in popular culture.
Jack function as our POV, but the show also has respect for the viewpoints of the other characters. Jack's common-sense man-on-the-streets smarts are needed in Eureka, and are important, but so are the book- and experiment-based smarts of the rest of the residents. The show values intelligence, of all stripes, and it also does a very good job of presenting the joy and awe and wonder inherent in learning new things, and in creating those things, and, most of all, in all the wonderful and weird possibilities of the universe.
That sense of joy and wonder, along with the complex characters (no one is a caricature; everyone has unexpected facets to their personalities), is one of my favorite things about the show.
I am so very glad and grateful that gin200168 introduced me to it.
Little Tokyo, here in downtown Los Angeles, is a wonderful place. I had a great time going there on Sunday morning the weekend Gin was here and wandering through all the different shops in Japanese Village Plaza.
I love the fresh peanut butter and chocolate mochi at Fugetsu-Do (founded in 1903!), which is across the street from the Plaza, and I love the Japanese grocery store inside the Plaza, where we bought bento boxes and snacks and tea, and where we also could have gotten gorgeously fresh sushi, or tuna, or teeny-tiny baby octopi.
I love all the little stores where you can buy Japanese toys and stationery and dishware; I love the dishes I picked out in one of them.
I really love my new (and burgeoning) Lucky Cat collection.
I loved the other bakeries we went into, and the ultra-inexpensive pastries we got, and the place that sold the special little red-bean pancakes. One of the things I remember best about the weekend is sitting on the fountain in the middle of the Plaza and eating our pancakes in the sun.
I look forward to going back.