SO far behind on my book, gotta make this quick. First things first, last night I took a break from writing to attend Video Games Live at the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and it was awesome! You can see most of the stuff on YouTube, so there's not much point in going into detail, although one thing you probably won't see was one gamer proposing to his girlfriend on stage who responded "Yes I will be your player 2!" LIKE A BOSS! I was disappointed they didn't do One Winged Angel, but they made up for it with their rendition of the opera sequence from Final Fantasy 6, with vocalist Jilian Aversi in full Celes cosplay and a bouquet of roses she threw out into the audience at just the right time. Seriously once I can find that video posted, I'm so reposting it here. Some other fun stuff included a guy playing space invaders and using tracking technology he actually was the shooter, having to physically run bac and forth across the stage, and also a Guitar Hero champion met Tommy Talarico's challenge of scoring over 450,000 points on expert level on "Pretender" by the Foo Fighters, and at the beginning there was a costume contest where Sub-Zero and Reptile gave a good re-enactment of Mortal Kombat, and little Link almost beheaded Zelda twice, but the winner was the Mario Bros.
Meanwhile, I have had a productive week with Red Ellen. I got to 25,000 words so I got all of my badges on NaNoWriMo except the final win. Ellen has now been on dates with all three of her suitors and she found out she will be an aunt because her cousin Jasper knocked up his girlfriend Jade so we can expect a baby dragonkin by the end(SPOILER: it's twins!). I've finished the expostion and now that we all know about the supernatural world Ellen can go back to normal life...yeah right there is no normal! Okay so she's going to juggle three guys over the next few months and connect with her cousin and the only other significant girl in this story before the final showdown on Halloween..for this year.
I've been adding a lot of characters so I think I should bring the focus on the main six:
Ellen - Obviously she is the main character. I'm basically writing her as if it was me if I had been a popular girl instead of a nerdy boy. In hindsight, I've realized everyone feels awkward during those years, and this is about her dealing with the pressure of being what everyone wants and not being totally sure if she can satisfy everyone, so she's tyring to find her own place. It's all I know, so it's the best I can do for a main character, the amount of what I have to do with her just makes it too damn hard for her to be anything else.
Jasper - This is more of a reflection of me, or rather who I wish I could have been. Jasper just wasn't main character material as I got deeper into development so I pushed him to sidekick status. Jasper's a bit more flavor than practical, he's kind of just there, though he is connected to important characters, so I hope the audience warms up to him inspite of a lack of substance.
Jade - Jasper's girlfriend, she serves two purposes, first, I don't want people thinking there's any chance of Jasper being the fourth suitor for Ellen(they're cousins, but when you consider Ellen was switched at birth and they didn't meet until they were sixteen, this doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I still don't want to go there), so I figure sticking him with a sweet baby mama will make readers less sympathetic to the idea of him going with Ellen and understand that he's platonic towards Ellen. The second reason is, I figured I needed a female friend for Ellen so I can pass the Bechdel test, which is basically a feminist standard measuring a work by whether you can have two female characters talk about something other than a guy. Apparently someon actually took the time to notice that in 99% of literature, there are less than two female characters, and when there are more than two female characters, they inevitably fall into some sort of conflict regarding one of the male characters, so there's been a demand that they be less one-dimensional. I'm tryign to give Ellen and Jade a true friendship so that they do stuff that has nothign to do with the guys. Well, maybe Jasper, but only because that couple is actually young and in love and they are totally a package deal and I feel there's enough conflict in the story without them having drama...at least in this volume.
Jason - the hunk, he represents what evey girl is a suker for in the physical sense. He is Jacob from Twilight multiplied by a factor of Channing Tatum. He is the guy you just want to see with his shirt off, in just his underwear if you're lucky. You don't really need him to say anything, just stand there and look pretty. You know you want this guy even if you're ashamed to admit you're that shallow. Jason actually is a nice guy, but he just happens to come in the perfect package.
Ralph - the exotic gentleman, he has an accent, he's artistic, everything he does is sexy, even when it's lame, just because he's got that foreign refined je ne sais quoi. I even gave him the most pretentious name I could think of. He's another fantasy, but again, he's actually a nice guy who just also happens to come in a perfect package.
Nathaniel - the bad boy, Nathaniel is a bad boy, he is the guy you absolutely should never ever be with and yet in spite of that, or maybe, on some sick twisted level, because of it, you want him anyway. I once liked the idea of redeeming a vampire, but it got done to death and now everyone seems to think vampires are tortured souls, they've lost their horror edge. In this book, I'm trying to make vampires evil again, and Nathaniel is just a total dick. So far I've actually written him as a sympathetic character, but he's also a liar and when the truth comes out you will probably hate him for playing with Ellen's heart. Basically his part of the story is drawn from my experience with guys who are total dicks and yet still get girls while I am a gentleman and get friend-zoned by the same girls who call me to ask why this guy broke her heart. I totally expect that no matter how much of dick I make Nathaniel, there will be a sizable fan base rootign for Ellen to end up with him anyway. I'm just going to say right now, that is not going to happen, not in my story(SPOILER:at the end of the series, Nathaniel will DIE, Ellen will not be with him EVER). The moral of Red Ellen is that bad boys are no good and you should defintely explore better options.
Well, I need to get back to writing, so see you next week!
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