OOC: Character Questions

[henrik_paulsen]

[Memething that's been going around: Ask me questions about my characters! I'd be happy to answer for both Henrik and Yujao, with the caveat that I may answer insufficiently, or in less than timely fashion, or just plain incorrectly. This goes double for asking 'what X thinks about Y,' because character thoughts change frequently.]

Comments

[classicalegoist]

does yujao ever miss her wife? does yujao's wife ever miss her? be honest!

[henrik_paulsen]

Yujao never really misses her wife--or rather, she misses her only the way you miss an old classmate whom you never knew particularly well, but with whom you danced once out of a feeling of obligation (and you could see in one another's eyes that the obligation was mutually felt). At times, she wonders how her wife is getting on, back in Lie Gao, but she never wonders enough to write.

Yujao's wife hopes that Yujao won't come home. She likes managing the family business without Yujao mucking around aping the lower classes and making shoddy investments and bringing prostitutes home at all hours.

[erisfnord]

For Henrik: What's his sister like? What was she like before she went mad, or was she always that way?

Yujao - what's her wife (husband? I recall seeing both?) like?

[henrik_paulsen]

Annelise is the youngest of the Paulsen siblings, a tall, plump, heavy-limbed woman with a broad, girlish laugh; she is a woman who grew up climbing trees and reading (and hiding) books on mysticism and magic. Her brothers would try to encourage her to stop reading things their father didn't approve of, but they also colluded with her in concealing what she read, and so their admonitions never stuck. She wanted very much to be like her older brothers, to catch up with them and to play with them and to follow them to school in Copenhagen; alas, this was not in the cards for her. Instead, she developed a social circle of budding mystics and female scholars, whom she'd entertain by reading Tarot cards and tea leaves. After Christer's death, Henrik and Theodor went to her to serve as their medium in contacting their dead friend--and he decided, in his mechanical-minded way, to live in her mind, since his was currently interred. The experience left her shattered and disoriented, and over a period of a month or so, it splintered the

[classicalegoist]

now i'm curious -- shadow!henrik?

[henrik_paulsen]

Henrik's shadow is a thing of tatters--clothes unmended, face unwashed and unshaven, nails long and broken. He does not answer when spoken to, does not meet one's eyes; if he has grown worn with self-neglect, he has also retreated into that neglected self. It is a solipsism from which the self has been forcibly, violently erased.

He could never harm another. He could never inflict suffering on a fellow-creature, never endanger one he loves ... and yet every attack one levels against him does equal damage to oneself; every rent in his flesh rends those around him. He destroys others by destroying himself.

[classicalegoist]

oh, this is good. ludonarrative consonance high-fives, of course, but it's so perfect -- the part that henrik refuses to face isn't the part of him that would actively harm anyone, but that 'destroys others by destroying himself.'

Question 1

[scarletolj]

What does Henrik think the soul is? Not what do books say, but what does he FEEL and BELIEVE it to be?

Question 2

[scarletolj]

How does Henrik experience his Drownie half? From the Inside, that is.

Re: Question 2

[henrik_paulsen]

He experiences it mostly as a difficulty in focusing. He'll be distracted with little melodies that get caught in his head, or his mind will wander as he's walking and he'll find himself near the river. At first, the urge to plunge into the water was unbearable, but since he got his boat, he's learned to bear it better. It helps, to be able to go to the docks and to feel the water lapping at the pylons; it helps, to look down into the sinkhole near his boat and to think about diving into that deep blackness. He still has difficulty in getting properly warm, but the warm amber helps, for reasons that he doesn't quite understand. He's taken to carrying it about when he thinks Theodor will let him get away with it.

His dreams, though, are always of water.