For the Very First Time

[triskellion]

So, everyone who has been comenting on my Jack and Yvette stories have been complaining that they don't understand the backstory. So, here is some backstory. This is the first meeting of Jack Daw and Yvette Fraiser.

Comments

[kailita]

Yay backstory! ^.^ I thought you did the switching back and forth of perspectives very nicely. It’s easy for the inner narrative to become convoluted or mushed when you’re not sticking with one character’s viewpoint, but you pulled it off well with Jack and Yvette.

Yvette has my utmost respect. Her first real conversation outside the family is with her hero (and oh, as an avid football fan, I can relate), he tells her things she’s never known about her family and tells her that she has a rare magical gift…and yet she manages to keep her head admirably, all things considered. Very impressive.

But I’m with Smeddley - they had a kid as a quirk? What? How does that work? Their relationship seems to be getting off to a fine start here, though. How old are both of them at this time?

Have you mentioned that Jack is a baseball player before? Did I totally miss that? Because I never would have guessed that…for some reason, I thought he was a music teacher. (And if flirting is Jack’s second love and music is his third, what is his first?) And now I really want to know what Jack’s healer girl couldn’t heal him of. Are we ever going to find that out?

I really like the idea of a “gift from the wind” and being compelled to play the song when going inside or outside. What an interesting idea - really OCD, but really intriguing at the same time.

(Also: Gregory Gregornio - Best Name Ever. I don’t think I could take my headmaster seriously if that was his name, though.)

[triskellion]

My original version of Jack was that he was a quidditch player, so the references in Tea Time were all to quidditch. Now that I am placing the characters in an original world, he plays baseball. His first love is baseball, his second flirting/sex, and his third is music.

What she couldn't heal him of was the infertility I mentioned in Tea Time. He really is clinically sterile. At eighteen the doctors told him that with extensive medical help he might, might, have a child. Or it might not work at all. To him Robyn is a miracle.

Yvette will be eighteen over Christmas and Jack is approaching fifty or sixty, can't quite ... no, has to be sixty if I keep saying he's been a ball player for 40 years. But Mages tend to live longer than mundanes, so he's in his prime.

And Robyn's birth is a quirk. The story they usually tell if forced is they were caught in someone's screwed up spell. What really happened is that they are both windtalkers and the wind decided it wanted them to have a kid. Until Yvette found out she was pregnant, they thought the both had a really intense dream one night. Yvette and Jack's relationship will always be complicated. That's just the way it is.

Thanks for the compliments. Much appreciated. I really should try and write another story that's chronological. The next one I have written takes place after Tea Time. Ah well.

[kailita]

Ohhh. That totally makes sense now. A friend and I had characters that ended up in a similar situation...he was the last of the Wood Elves (and didn't know it), and she was the only woman he ever spent time with and cared for, and the remaining Wood Elves were like, "Umm, we need an heir...good thing we're masters of Telepathy and Compulsion!" And then the two wake up in the same bed and are like, "What?" Yeah...awkward. And Jack and Yvette's situation must have been as well. But I like complicated relationships. (And I hope you eventually get around to showing us that segment of their story! ^.^)

And yeah, Quidditch! That sounds more familiar. But way to go on placing your characters in an original world! I think the transfer worked really well - I didn't see any residual Harry Potter, and you're creating your own system of magic and social order and everything. It should be fun!

[triskellion]

Oh good. I'm glad it's now acceptable. I know that there will be at least one other kid, Jamie, who arrived after a bit too much comforting after a horrible experience. The experience has been written. The comforting will probably just be implied.

If your interested in seeing more about these characters, I've been writing drabbles for writing_game, as has gelsey. We are posting them to our own journals after the end of each game (or at least she is. I'm behind). They aren't complete stories, but there are a few insights from place to place. I'm also working on a post that will provide all links to the worls in chronological order. Eventually. Curretnly they are just tagged with a link to the page on the side of my LJ format.

gelsey and I are enjoying working on the new magical system and the politics. I hope it shows. It's nice to know that these guys are now all ours.

[kailita]

Yeah, there's something very special about original writing and having characters and settings that belong entirely to you that fan fiction just can't touch, in my opinion. =)

I would definitely be interested in a post with chronologically-ordered links! Let me know once you get it up! (You can probably just reply to this post to tell me, because it'll go straight to my e-mail.)