Saturday, 31 January 2015
Saturday, 24 January 2015
How Her Heart Stopped (Or: If I Move, I Will Break This) - Flash-like Fiction 2
How Her Heart Stopped (Or: If I Move, I Will Break This)
Night. Late at night, burrowed deep in the darkest dark. Even the night owls have quieted down. No one else exists. There is nothing outside this room, this bed. Everything that doesn't exist is blackness, even the things that do exist are beyond seeing and believing, they are hidden in whispers, seen with hands, felt with hearts.
Everything is ours and the night will never end. We are curled together, neither ending, not beginning, still and spinning together, whispers cocooning us in warmth and happy.
Legs are strewn over legs, heads bent together. We talk. And talk. And talk. The substance measured only by our interest. It matters because we care, we are all caring.
We stop.
A breath, a shared breath.
He kisses my face.
I stop. There are ghosts across my face, dancing, shimmering.
This is space we have not occupied before. Me and Him and We have all been different before.
I settle back into the pillow, curling my face into a cool spot. Safe. Cozy. Happy. This is a moment of beauty. Perfect friendship. Everything is trust and patience and care. This is the life I want. I didn't realize I want.
He leans forward, there isn't much 'forward' to lean, we are already so close, so one. But he does. And our faces line up perfectly. Our foreheads touching, breathing the same breath. Noses pressed together. Eyes perfectly parallel. Equal. Symmetrical. And he kisses me.
a centimeter.
a hair's with.
a single muscle.
If I move it meant... something. Meant something more. But if I stayed exactly still, more still than I have ever been for any reason in my entire life, it was friendship; he cared so deeply for me that lips were hugs and everything was safe.
Night. Late at night, burrowed deep in the darkest dark. Even the night owls have quieted down. No one else exists. There is nothing outside this room, this bed. Everything that doesn't exist is blackness, even the things that do exist are beyond seeing and believing, they are hidden in whispers, seen with hands, felt with hearts.
Everything is ours and the night will never end. We are curled together, neither ending, not beginning, still and spinning together, whispers cocooning us in warmth and happy.
Legs are strewn over legs, heads bent together. We talk. And talk. And talk. The substance measured only by our interest. It matters because we care, we are all caring.
We stop.
A breath, a shared breath.
He kisses my face.
I stop. There are ghosts across my face, dancing, shimmering.
This is space we have not occupied before. Me and Him and We have all been different before.
They still are.
I kiss his face. His cheeks, his forehead, two, three times across. His temple, the soft corner of his cheekbone, the small plane between cheeks and chin. I lay back. There. Equal. Balanced.I settle back into the pillow, curling my face into a cool spot. Safe. Cozy. Happy. This is a moment of beauty. Perfect friendship. Everything is trust and patience and care. This is the life I want. I didn't realize I want.
He leans forward, there isn't much 'forward' to lean, we are already so close, so one. But he does. And our faces line up perfectly. Our foreheads touching, breathing the same breath. Noses pressed together. Eyes perfectly parallel. Equal. Symmetrical. And he kisses me.
He presses the perfect crescent of his mouth to mine.
And I didn't move an inch.a centimeter.
a hair's with.
a single muscle.
If I move it meant... something. Meant something more. But if I stayed exactly still, more still than I have ever been for any reason in my entire life, it was friendship; he cared so deeply for me that lips were hugs and everything was safe.
Sunday, 11 January 2015
Book ReviewBlog 4: Book 2: A Dance with Dragons
I think about characters a lot. About powerful characters.
There are different kinds of powerful characters. There are characters like Voldemort who use pain and torture to intimidate others. They're desperate to have power and keep it. Like Klaus (from The Originals). They've had to fight for their power and they've done anything to get. A little remose would make them sad, but they aren't, instead they're just assholes.
Which makes me think of Joffery (A Song of Ice and Fire). And how no amount of remorse would ever make him sad, he will always be the most sadistic asshole in literature.
He's a completely different kind of powerful character - one who isn't powerful. He never had to gain power by working for it, it was handed to him on a golden platter (or with the tusks of a boar). Everyone knew he was just a boy so he acts like the sociopath he is by using terror and cruelty to try and get his way. In contrast, someone like his grandfather Tywin or Marcel Gerrard (The Originals) have worked intensely hard to get the power they've had and realize that sometimes, honey catches more flies than vinegar. Basically, it's like what everyone's always saying to Klaus - Mercy. Or a great line from The Count of Monte Cristo, "Mercy, Fernand. Mercy." Right at the end where Edmond is trying to let his anger go and leave with his family. But alas, true to his character, Fernand Mondego does not show mercy. His is still, after 16 years, after getting everything he wanted, still angry and still jealous of Edmond. He shows that he is more like Joffery, with his entitlement and... lack of any real feelings...
Both characters prove in the end that they have only delusions, whispers, dreams, of the power they so desperately seek.
Edmond is another interestingly powerful character. He worked for his power, mostly bought it, lied for a good deal of it, and took the rest of it at the tip of a sword. He was smart enough to know when he wasn't the most powerful man in the room, and how to use that to his advantage, rather than letting it work against him. He had mercy when it mattered most, and left it behind when he couldn't deal with it. But he always had pity, mercy, a heart, and all that doesn't just make him sad, it makes him a character you root for. Like Daenerys. She's a character everybody roots for. She was born to it, but she wasn't born into it. She's risen from the ashes (pretty literally) and worked, and fought, and lost, and conquered.
I think about these characters a lot. Mostly, I think, because I don't understand it. I don't know how to write characters like this, with any kind of power. I think it is so beyond me and my life of having any kind of power like this that I can't really imagine a character with these traits, goals, lives, into being.
But there are real people like that. Maybe not in the supernatural ways, but in their quests for power. And even in real life, I don't understand them.
Maybe I even understand them best in fiction, in print, on film. Because when I am so crushed, so torn apart by evil and thirst I will never understand, I can put it down. I can turn it off. I can walk away. I can go back to a life and a world that almost makes sense. Even if there aren't dragons here.
There are different kinds of powerful characters. There are characters like Voldemort who use pain and torture to intimidate others. They're desperate to have power and keep it. Like Klaus (from The Originals). They've had to fight for their power and they've done anything to get. A little remose would make them sad, but they aren't, instead they're just assholes.
Which makes me think of Joffery (A Song of Ice and Fire). And how no amount of remorse would ever make him sad, he will always be the most sadistic asshole in literature.
He's a completely different kind of powerful character - one who isn't powerful. He never had to gain power by working for it, it was handed to him on a golden platter (or with the tusks of a boar). Everyone knew he was just a boy so he acts like the sociopath he is by using terror and cruelty to try and get his way. In contrast, someone like his grandfather Tywin or Marcel Gerrard (The Originals) have worked intensely hard to get the power they've had and realize that sometimes, honey catches more flies than vinegar. Basically, it's like what everyone's always saying to Klaus - Mercy. Or a great line from The Count of Monte Cristo, "Mercy, Fernand. Mercy." Right at the end where Edmond is trying to let his anger go and leave with his family. But alas, true to his character, Fernand Mondego does not show mercy. His is still, after 16 years, after getting everything he wanted, still angry and still jealous of Edmond. He shows that he is more like Joffery, with his entitlement and... lack of any real feelings...
Both characters prove in the end that they have only delusions, whispers, dreams, of the power they so desperately seek.
Edmond is another interestingly powerful character. He worked for his power, mostly bought it, lied for a good deal of it, and took the rest of it at the tip of a sword. He was smart enough to know when he wasn't the most powerful man in the room, and how to use that to his advantage, rather than letting it work against him. He had mercy when it mattered most, and left it behind when he couldn't deal with it. But he always had pity, mercy, a heart, and all that doesn't just make him sad, it makes him a character you root for. Like Daenerys. She's a character everybody roots for. She was born to it, but she wasn't born into it. She's risen from the ashes (pretty literally) and worked, and fought, and lost, and conquered.
 |
| Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons |
I think about these characters a lot. Mostly, I think, because I don't understand it. I don't know how to write characters like this, with any kind of power. I think it is so beyond me and my life of having any kind of power like this that I can't really imagine a character with these traits, goals, lives, into being.
But there are real people like that. Maybe not in the supernatural ways, but in their quests for power. And even in real life, I don't understand them.
Maybe I even understand them best in fiction, in print, on film. Because when I am so crushed, so torn apart by evil and thirst I will never understand, I can put it down. I can turn it off. I can walk away. I can go back to a life and a world that almost makes sense. Even if there aren't dragons here.
Friday, 9 January 2015
I'm A Writer - Flash-like Fiction 1
I'm a writer. I say that to myself and to others, and most of the time, I believe it.
Most of the time.
And the rest of the time? a voice in the back of my head asks.
The rest of the time I feel like I'm just pretending.
Well that's stupid the voice says back. And I realize who the voice belongs to: Seren. And she's right because Seren is perpetually calling me on my shit, perpetually a smart ass, and perpetually a fictional character. My fictional character. I roll my eyes at her, but smile for the company. She sits across the gross cafeteria table from me. And as much of a smart ass, and as brutally, annoyingly honest as she can be, I ask, "So what do you think then?"
"I think you're lazy."
"Yeah."
There's no point in arguing with her, she's even more stubborn than I am, "I can be lazy sometimes."
She doesn't miss a beat. I think she knows I don't want to fight. She also doesn't care.
"You think you're not sure about what you want? What you want to do?"
"Yeah, because I am unsure."
"Then find something you are completely sure about."
I lean towards her, my arms leaning on the sticky plastic table cover. "And what would that be?"
It's like we're alone in a small, intimate Italian restaurant, rather than me sitting alone writing in a work lunchroom with musty air conditioning blaring and NFL droning.
"That's me," she says with a smirk. God, she can be so full of herself.
"You?" I lean back in my chair like I imagine a mobster that just heard a ridiculous deal, no dice.
Because it is kind of ridiculous.
"You? You were the most unsure I have ever been about a character. I was never sure of you. Even like this you feel more like me than a you should."
"But you never gave up on my story." She gets up and walks over to the chair next to mine. "You never gave up on me and Dewr." Dewr, of course, is her (fictitious) ancient dragon, and the root of her superpowers.
I grudgingly look over at her. She looks earnest, like this is really so important. I guess to her it might be.
"You mattered too much. And besides," I shift in my seat, trying to let this oddly personal, intimate moment pass, "You would never have let me."
Seren gets out of her chair, walks around, restless, obviously glad to be rid of this moment as well. "Exactly. You can't think I'm going to sit quietly through this either, do you?"
"No, I guess not."
She stops pacing and looks back at me, her fierce, brown eyes quietly intense again. "You want to know why I think you're a writer?"
"Because I made you?"
"Because you can't imagine a world without me in it. And right now, the only world that does, is in here." She taps my temple, her fingers cold as ice. As cold as the medieval world she was born from. I blink once and she's gone.
Most of the time.
And the rest of the time? a voice in the back of my head asks.
The rest of the time I feel like I'm just pretending.
Well that's stupid the voice says back. And I realize who the voice belongs to: Seren. And she's right because Seren is perpetually calling me on my shit, perpetually a smart ass, and perpetually a fictional character. My fictional character. I roll my eyes at her, but smile for the company. She sits across the gross cafeteria table from me. And as much of a smart ass, and as brutally, annoyingly honest as she can be, I ask, "So what do you think then?"
"I think you're lazy."
"Yeah."
There's no point in arguing with her, she's even more stubborn than I am, "I can be lazy sometimes."
She doesn't miss a beat. I think she knows I don't want to fight. She also doesn't care.
"You think you're not sure about what you want? What you want to do?"
"Yeah, because I am unsure."
"Then find something you are completely sure about."
I lean towards her, my arms leaning on the sticky plastic table cover. "And what would that be?"
It's like we're alone in a small, intimate Italian restaurant, rather than me sitting alone writing in a work lunchroom with musty air conditioning blaring and NFL droning.
"That's me," she says with a smirk. God, she can be so full of herself.
"You?" I lean back in my chair like I imagine a mobster that just heard a ridiculous deal, no dice.
Because it is kind of ridiculous.
"You? You were the most unsure I have ever been about a character. I was never sure of you. Even like this you feel more like me than a you should."
"But you never gave up on my story." She gets up and walks over to the chair next to mine. "You never gave up on me and Dewr." Dewr, of course, is her (fictitious) ancient dragon, and the root of her superpowers.
I grudgingly look over at her. She looks earnest, like this is really so important. I guess to her it might be.
"You mattered too much. And besides," I shift in my seat, trying to let this oddly personal, intimate moment pass, "You would never have let me."
Seren gets out of her chair, walks around, restless, obviously glad to be rid of this moment as well. "Exactly. You can't think I'm going to sit quietly through this either, do you?"
"No, I guess not."
She stops pacing and looks back at me, her fierce, brown eyes quietly intense again. "You want to know why I think you're a writer?"
"Because I made you?"
"Because you can't imagine a world without me in it. And right now, the only world that does, is in here." She taps my temple, her fingers cold as ice. As cold as the medieval world she was born from. I blink once and she's gone.
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