Silence's Birthday
Today is Silence's birthday! Or at least it's the day I've picked for it on Earth, since it's also my Five-Twelfths Birthday and she is very much a creature of "more ahead of her than behind."
I realized, slowly over the years, that Silence's life in The Curious Tale is rarely a happy one. The world throws a lot at her. In fact, as recently as Christmas this week I wrote yet another devastating scene for her-one long in coming; it was no spur of the moment thing. Silence has a dark and violent past, and After The Hero begins with her in a terrible funk after perceiving the betrayal of the Gods, and since that's also her mood in Book I there hasn't been much chance for me to explore the happier times which she also has. And I have to sandwich those times in between all the indignities and disasters that befall her.
In the 2000s I never would have described Silence as unhappy, just as I wouldn't have described it of myself, because it wouldn't have been true. I too had an awful past, and the world "threw a lot at me" as an adult, not least a crippling poverty, but it never really mattered because for many years I was irrepressible and sincerely considered myself a happy person. That only changed with the Troubles, actually. I had fifteen good years of independent adult life as a happy person. For Silence, I could draw a rough analogue of this between her first arrival at Gala years before After The Hero begins and a catastrophic event that occurs about halfway through the story. But, as with me and even more so actually, these are not "happy" years per se. Or, perhaps another way of putting it is that Silence faces a lot of stress and strain, restriction and adversity, etc., during this time.
I don't recall when I first began to realize that, however she personally feels about it, Silence doesn't come across to others as a happy person. Even as far back as the original RPG, she is most commonly brooding and melancholy, and faces an endless onslaught of external hardships and woes. It wasn't until I met Empire on Ice Silence, in the Year of 32, that I had the chance to see another side of her, and that Silence, despite being the exact same person, comes across so utterly differently. She is fat and impish and playful and has a great sense of humor, and mainly spends her days shamelessly lying and cheating her way into getting irresponsible amounts of food. It would be impossible to look at that Silence and call her unhappy, and only a damnfool would even think to try.
By the same token it's not that After The Hero Silence is inherently an unhappy person; it's that she leads a profoundly unhappy life-mostly outside of her control. There are the trees that grow safe in the forest on firm footing, towering and tall, and there are the gnarled and terrible trees that face the sea and the gale alone on the cliffside in the stinging salt air...and they are the same thing after all, and their needs are the same. But they look so different from the trees of the forest, because they lead very different lives. And I suppose to complete the analogy, all the other trees, uncomfortable at the sight of the latter, would tell the tree on the cliff to get some therapy and maybe take a pill for depression. "The fault, dear tree, is not in our stars but in ourselves." Perhaps Shakespeare was wrong.
My challenge for Silence in recent years has been to continue to depict her as I used to be but no longer am, which is to say irrepressible and happy-even if it wouldn't necessarily seem so to others. I think what this really means, for people like her and me, is energy. Drive. Vivacity. Relish. Delight. Silence has some good years ahead of her in the first half of After The Hero (and some good years behind her to recollect). I hope I can write these times justly and fully; there deserves to be some record, somewhere in this Universe, of a Relancii Silence Terlais who can smile freely, without it being a rare and poignant thing.
If I had The Curious Tale to do all over again, from scratch...I think I would go a little easier on her.
But for today at least I can wish her a Happy Birthday!
(Yes, the Relancii year is only 72% as long as ours so actually her birthday should cycle through our year...but let us not quibble over pointless irrelevancies!)
I realized, slowly over the years, that Silence's life in The Curious Tale is rarely a happy one. The world throws a lot at her. In fact, as recently as Christmas this week I wrote yet another devastating scene for her-one long in coming; it was no spur of the moment thing. Silence has a dark and violent past, and After The Hero begins with her in a terrible funk after perceiving the betrayal of the Gods, and since that's also her mood in Book I there hasn't been much chance for me to explore the happier times which she also has. And I have to sandwich those times in between all the indignities and disasters that befall her.
In the 2000s I never would have described Silence as unhappy, just as I wouldn't have described it of myself, because it wouldn't have been true. I too had an awful past, and the world "threw a lot at me" as an adult, not least a crippling poverty, but it never really mattered because for many years I was irrepressible and sincerely considered myself a happy person. That only changed with the Troubles, actually. I had fifteen good years of independent adult life as a happy person. For Silence, I could draw a rough analogue of this between her first arrival at Gala years before After The Hero begins and a catastrophic event that occurs about halfway through the story. But, as with me and even more so actually, these are not "happy" years per se. Or, perhaps another way of putting it is that Silence faces a lot of stress and strain, restriction and adversity, etc., during this time.
I don't recall when I first began to realize that, however she personally feels about it, Silence doesn't come across to others as a happy person. Even as far back as the original RPG, she is most commonly brooding and melancholy, and faces an endless onslaught of external hardships and woes. It wasn't until I met Empire on Ice Silence, in the Year of 32, that I had the chance to see another side of her, and that Silence, despite being the exact same person, comes across so utterly differently. She is fat and impish and playful and has a great sense of humor, and mainly spends her days shamelessly lying and cheating her way into getting irresponsible amounts of food. It would be impossible to look at that Silence and call her unhappy, and only a damnfool would even think to try.
By the same token it's not that After The Hero Silence is inherently an unhappy person; it's that she leads a profoundly unhappy life-mostly outside of her control. There are the trees that grow safe in the forest on firm footing, towering and tall, and there are the gnarled and terrible trees that face the sea and the gale alone on the cliffside in the stinging salt air...and they are the same thing after all, and their needs are the same. But they look so different from the trees of the forest, because they lead very different lives. And I suppose to complete the analogy, all the other trees, uncomfortable at the sight of the latter, would tell the tree on the cliff to get some therapy and maybe take a pill for depression. "The fault, dear tree, is not in our stars but in ourselves." Perhaps Shakespeare was wrong.
My challenge for Silence in recent years has been to continue to depict her as I used to be but no longer am, which is to say irrepressible and happy-even if it wouldn't necessarily seem so to others. I think what this really means, for people like her and me, is energy. Drive. Vivacity. Relish. Delight. Silence has some good years ahead of her in the first half of After The Hero (and some good years behind her to recollect). I hope I can write these times justly and fully; there deserves to be some record, somewhere in this Universe, of a Relancii Silence Terlais who can smile freely, without it being a rare and poignant thing.
If I had The Curious Tale to do all over again, from scratch...I think I would go a little easier on her.
But for today at least I can wish her a Happy Birthday!
(Yes, the Relancii year is only 72% as long as ours so actually her birthday should cycle through our year...but let us not quibble over pointless irrelevancies!)