Sorry about missing last week's post, folks. I guess I owe you two catch-up weeks now.
An old college friend of mine that I haven't seen since graduation was on a week-long getaway with her husband to celebrate their first year anniversary. On their way home, they swung by to visit us. So, that's what I was doing last Tuesday instead of working on this post. I should have done so ahead of time, but Sunday and Monday Night football has been killing me with that.
Anyway, I want to give a shout out to Massachusetts and Boston, as well as Mouse and Bear - whose anniversary was yesterday - Happy One Year, you guys!
Now, as for my writing..... it's both good and bad. My freetime at home seems to be getting smaller and smaller, and so I have to really work on breaking down my time there to try to get more organized. In the meantime, my only time for writing and reading is at work. With Holiday Season creeping up quick, the store has actually been moderately busy, so not terribly too much writing there either.
So, sadly, I have nothing to show for these two weeks. Not to say I haven't written, just not anything that holds well on its own.
I'm still obsessing over Jolene, to be blunt.
A few weeks back Mouse started up a forum for the D&D game Bear runs. It's kind of an unofficial Wikia page for the game and the world it's played in. She's slowly posting about locations, the religions, and legends that the bards would sing about. That way we know more of the world and the stuff our characters should know being raised there.
The big thing, though, are the sections for our characters. Each of us has one with three sub-threads: life goals; profile/backstory; journal.
I posted Jolene's backstory, but it doesn't seem nearly as in-depth as some of the others. Both Mouse and Corlmitz's player have a multi-post thread of their characters' backstories. I have to say, I'm a bit entranced by Corlmitz's writing. Leave it to me to role play with a bunch of writers that are so good I again feel pathetically inferior!
As I said, I didn't really focus much on Jolene's past. I gave the broad strokes: She was a lonely child, trusted/fell in love with the wrong person, did the same thing four more times, gave up on love, became a prostitute, was nearly killed by a client, gave up on humanity and trust, became a thief as a side-business to prostitution, met up with the group. Obviously my backstory post is a bit more detailed than THAT, but it's not multi-chaptered like Corlmitz or Mahtab.
My main focus was that journal section. The big thing with Jolene is that her trust issues prevent her from really speaking her mind and feelings about what has happened each game. The journal section now allows her to do so. Granted, this is all Out-of-Character knowledge for any of the players that may read it, so it won't really help Jolene in the long run, but I'm hoping this helps the other players at least get a better understanding of why Jolene is the way she is. Poor, closed off, misunderstood thing....
So, my main task since Mouse created the forum, has been to reread the entire game log session by session, and write out Jolene's journal reaction to them. No one else seems to be utilizing the Journal threads as much as I am, but it really helps me get into Jolene's head. It's kind of moot since any grand discoveries I have with her on past sessions can't translate INTO the sessions that have already past, but it helps me build up to the next one. And from now on I can update the journal right after sessions to keep her emotions fresh.
I like watching her feelings for Rensin grow, and with them, her denial that they're real; her need to rebuke her attachment, and her desire to cut him off. I also knew that Mahtab annoyed her, but I didn't realize to what degree she actually DISTRUSTED the cleric. Poor Mouse. It's okay, I the player understands Mahtab! Jolene just isn't a trusting person.....
Which brings me to the biggest surprise of them all when I was journaling. The person Jolene trusts the most out of the whole group - including Rensin - is Corlmitz. There's a connection there that she can't quite figure out. It would be fun if she was emotionally torn between the two men, but it's not even that. There's no attraction there - sorry, Half-Orc... she's a bit shallow... - but respect. She kind of thinks of Corlmitz as an older brother she'd hate to disappoint. So she hates herself for doing exactly that. Especially since it seems to be him that rescues her all the time; speaks up for her all the time.
Well, as I said, it might not be something that I can share with you guys - without the context of the game play, I don't know if any of her journaling would make sense and/or be enjoyable to read. Still, I wrote over 3400 words the first week the forum was up, and this past week I wrote a little over 3200 more. It's something, but I don't know if it's really helping anything.
I haven't been working on Ronoxym's weekly flash-fiction challenge because I can't think of anything aside from Jolene. The best I had was an 800-word start to a psuedo-backstory tale for Jolene. An explanation as to why telling the truth is so hard for her; namely, because she thinks she IS telling the truth when she tells the lies she believes or when she tells half-truths. She doesn't know HOW to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The snaffu - aside from breaking the "no fanfiction" rule for the challenge - is that the concept of the story is Deceit, one of the Prime Evils, is telling the story of how he's "raised" Jolene since conception. However, the story is told by Deceit, so naturally the reader is going to go into it taking the story with a grain of salt; never trusting that what Deceit is telling them is true.
I thought of flipping the script and having the Virtue of Wisdom telling the story instead, but the joy of Jolene's slip into deception and living on lies would have to be reworked. I'm still not sure what to do with this tale, but at least it's more words....
All the word count; none of the content to show. I don't even know what to read at group tonight. Plus, I'm not prepping at all for NaNo. I may have to shelve the Gyateara story rework until next year and just figure out how to write a Jolene story next month. Especially if I'm so obsessed with her.
I don't even really know anymore. I'm hoping to get some clarity this week so I know what the heck I'm doing next month!
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