March 26th- Monday
(I apologise in advance for the mass amounts of stuff I'm going to attempt to post over the next few days!)
Today, we challenge you to list some trivia facts about your character- anything and everything that you never get a chance to bring up. Why you chose their PB-- are they left-handed or right-handed-- zodiac sign? Favorite food? Place of birth? Something you know about them they don't know? Go wild, but give us a list of five trivia facts such as would be listed on their IMDB trivia page if your character became a star
First, I would like to say that I love this prompt! I love the random stuff that I know about my characters and the reasons for the things that they do what they do, especially as I know that some of them really will never appear in print, though a couple of the facts that I'm going to reveal here have appeared in a few of the drables and other prompts. And secondly, it's 11 minutes past 2 in the morning as I start to write this, let's see how long it is before I fall asleep while writing!
Donnelly (I don't normally do him first, but he's the most interesting)
1. His full name is Dominic Stephen Christopher Lea.
Originally his name was going to be Christopher Donnelly, but I didn't like that much and also it would have meant there were technically 3 Chris's in the story- Chris/Crystal, Chris/Donnelly and at that point one of Maku's brothers is Chris. While riding home one day I realised that his name was actually Dominic Lea, which made a lot more sense as to why he's never been able to find out anything about who he was before he ended up on the street. The Stephen part is because one of my friends from college was called Stee Lea, but we all called him Steely. I thought a little nod in his direction was just right.
2. His parents were killed by a mummy's curse.
Um, ok, so I kind of made up his backstory in parts... this bit came from when I was creating him and his parents in Sims3 and I realised that the only way to kill them off and make it work in terms of the narrative part of the story would be to have a mummy curse them and they die from that. It turns out that I liked it so much that I made it canon for the entire story universe, not just Sims!
3. He does have family who are still alive.
His parents had become estranged from their families after their marriage (married against the will of their parents) and so never saw or spoke of other family members. When the police found the dead couple and discovered the boy missing they contacted family to find out as much as they could. There are three sets of uncles and aunts and about eight cousins. He meets a couple of them over the course of the books, but has no idea. One ends up working at Martin's house and helping in the fight against the Kalmari.
4. He introduced Martin to the SandWish and to the Green itself
The Green is the shopping centre where the SandWish (and Maku) used to be. Donnelly already knew it well because of all the times he'd managed to get cheap food there. He'd thought Maku was about the same age as him and Martin and had no idea that she might actually be about... I think she's something like ten years older than him! I know she's six older than Richard.
5. Donnelly wants to be a games designer
Because Donnelly is always playing the games at the arcade and on the DS he wants to be able to design games when he's older so he can make a game that (in theory) he wouldn't be able to defeat the first time playing it. (I have a feeling that I'm going to allow him to do this one day!)
((It's now 3pm Tuesday... I fell asleep while writing!))
</u>Maku</u>
1. Maku does not have a middle name.
Because her parents were planning on having a dozen or so kids they decided that giving them each a middle name would just mean having to remember more names in total and they'd only end up forgetting which names they'd used as first names and which were middle.
2. She was born in Bristol.
Due to the way that I have been writing these books I haven't been mentioning exact locations, so while I know that it's set in London, England, everyone else can just say that it's set wherever they want it to be really. Maku was born in Bristol and moved to London for university. Nate, her boyfriend at the time, went with her.
3. She would eat just about anything if it was covered in gravy.
Maku isn't a fussy eater, but she is a funny eater. When she was younger she could be convinced to eat just about anything and everything so long as it was liberally covered in either gravy, curry or (for sweet things) custard. She has got better about this over the years, but she still will eat things that she doesn't like as long as she covers them.
4. She ends up having at least 12 kids.
While playing Sims 2 I had Maku and Richard get married and have children. They ended up having a number of twins and each time I decided to make this canon. So (excluding her first child) she has two single births, three sets of twins, a set of triplets and then another single. I have names for all of them.
5. She actually has dragon blood.
Maku's dad was dragon-kin, and each of his children got a little of his genes. The boys all have a slightly extended life span, but Maku's youthfulness, her hair and the fact that she lives a LOT longer than a human really should be able to, are all thanks to dragon blood.
Richard
1. He does not like water.
I ended up creating this during the 100 drabbles of summer last year; he is close to being hydrophobic, though he is able to cope with baths and showers, and he does like the rain. Maku is the first to realise it and is very nice about it. Katalin mocks.
2. Animals tend to like him
Not all animals, and not straight away, but they take to him a lot quicker than they would other people. This isn't any sort of magic, he just knows how to pitch his voice and use body language to put animals at ease. It's a shame it generally doesn't work with humans
3. He doesn't 'get' flirting.
Richard doesn't know how to flirt, and he doesn't realise when people are flirting with him, which causes him a lot of problems in the future when a number of young women (and not a small number of men) get the wrong idea about his intentions and think that he is receptive to theirs. Richard is always VERY confused about this!
4. He only ever uses Katalin's full name.
Richard and Katalin do not get on with each other, and so she tends to call him by various nicknames and he only ever calls her either Kathelina or LeFae.
5. He really doesn't like having to wear shoes.
He'll wear them if he has to, but he would much rather walk around barefoot. Socks are only just bearable.
Katalin
1. She has never particularly liked her name.
Neither the name that she was officially give (Kathelina), nor the name that her father would have rather used (Katalin) appeal to her and so while she tells Maku and the others to stop coming up with stupid nicknames, most of the time she actually prefers them to her actual name. These days she does not like being called Kalmari at all.
2. She can speak three languages at least semi-fluently.
She's fluent in English (speaking, listening, reading and writing), Japanese (speaking and listening) and French (reading and writing). She never uses the French and only uses the Japanese when she, Martin and Richard are having conversations they don't want the others to understand.
3. She still eats a proper balanced meal every evening if she is not with the others.
Katalin had a very strict diet while in the Kalmari, as did Richard and Martin, and when cooking for herself at home she will make herself a meal that fits the regulations she would have had to meet. She honestly likes the food.
4. Every phone she's owned has been bought by someone else.
Katalin doesn't really see the point in owning a mobile phone and probably wouldn't have one at all except for Martin insisting that it would be a good idea. He and Maku had both been responsible for buying her a phone at one time or another (often replacing one that she's lost or broken.
5. Her surname is a bit of a mystery.
Because her father died long before Katalin started wanting to know about her birth family, she has no idea where her surname comes from. She knows that it is French and that it probably means fairies, but she doesn't know if there is French ancestry or if there is any fairy kind in her background. And yes, she would quite like to know.
Crystal
1. Doesn't really have a gender.
Shapeshifters are able to change every single part of themselves including their reproductive organs and so Crystal chooses to be female
2. Has been male more times than female.
On visits to the human realms Crustal saw that it was often easier for men to get by than women and so tended to choose a male form for the sake of ease.
3. Is older than Amber by just over half a millennium.
Because it's difficult to keep track of ages when constantly changing your physical age Crystal probably isn't even aware of this little fact, not that it would matter even if they both knew.
4. Does not always use the same name(s).
Although Crystal chose that name because it could be used for both a male or female (which is typical of Shifter names), it is not the one that is used every time when in the human realms because it is not always suitable for the time or place, however, it does tend to be the one to fall back on, and it's the one used in the Dragon realms.
5. Has been (locally) famous a number of times.
In various times in the human realms Crystal has garnered some fame through local TV stations, radio, newspapers and other such media, but doesn't tend to talk about it.
6. It's sometimes really hard to remember to keep gender neutral when writing from Crystal's point of view!
Amber
1. She was born into a little tribe in Africa.
She had no idea that she was dragon-kin until she was ten years old. It was a rather big surprise and it took her a long time to get used to being in her dragon form instead of her human one.
2. She's been married over a hundred times.
Dragonites, like Shifters, spend a lot of the time in the human realms living human lives and so she has often met, dated and married men, she's even adopted children a number of times.
3. This is the first time that Amber has had a relationship with a girl.
Although Crystal could be a boy if they wanted, they have both agreed that the want she to be a girl in their relationship. They are both learning what it all means.
4. She used to have a big family.
Dragonite families do tend to be big; Amber had six brother and eight sisters before the war that destroyed their home, and now the only ones left at her mother and youngest sister.
5. She enjoys learning new things.
Amber is the sort of person that regularly signs up for adult courses at the local colleges and she really doesn't mind when Maku signs her up for a few either.
Martin
1. Doesn't really grow facial hair.
He tried growing a beard once and only got a few scraggly hairs on his chin. He likes not having to shave every day, but he hates that even Donnelly gets "manly stubble"
2. Could be a wonderful cook if he had more patience.
Martin is a very quick learner, and a careful cook, and he likes to try new things, but because he doesn't have the patience to stand and wait for something to be cooked, or to carefully mix things together to make something just right he just sticks with things like scrambled eggs and other very simply recipes
It has been over a week since I started this due to the fact that my netbook had to be taken for repairs, as did my housemate’s laptop and so I leant her mine and I was using a very old mostly knackered one. I finally have the netbook and laptop back though, and she has hers, so all is good and I can get on with this.
3. Really is incredibly lazy.
A lot of jokes are made about how lazy Martin is, and the truth is that he really is as bad as he pretends to be. The reason that he normally doesn’t get up until noon is because he can’t be bothered to get up, the reason he likes films so much is because he doesn’t actually have to do anything in order to enjoy them. His skill in gymnastics is simply because he had to do it with the Kalmari and so ended up being good at it.
4. He is gay.
Because of the way Martin sees life he always says that he knows what he likes at the moment and who he likes, the who being Donnelly, but the truth is that he is only attracted to men and this doesn’t change over the years.
5. He would kill anyone he had to if someone dared to hurt his friends.
While he tends to be fairly calm and collected when it comes to actually dealing with the Kalmari, or at least fighting against them, if any one of them tried to hurt his friends, and particularly Donnelly, he would kill them all.
Originally I was going to have them kidnap Donnelly, but Martin’s reaction was so extreme I realised that I had to change it
Today, we challenge you to list some trivia facts about your character- anything and everything that you never get a chance to bring up. Why you chose their PB-- are they left-handed or right-handed-- zodiac sign? Favorite food? Place of birth? Something you know about them they don't know? Go wild, but give us a list of five trivia facts such as would be listed on their IMDB trivia page if your character became a star
First, I would like to say that I love this prompt! I love the random stuff that I know about my characters and the reasons for the things that they do what they do, especially as I know that some of them really will never appear in print, though a couple of the facts that I'm going to reveal here have appeared in a few of the drables and other prompts. And secondly, it's 11 minutes past 2 in the morning as I start to write this, let's see how long it is before I fall asleep while writing!
Donnelly (I don't normally do him first, but he's the most interesting)
1. His full name is Dominic Stephen Christopher Lea.
Originally his name was going to be Christopher Donnelly, but I didn't like that much and also it would have meant there were technically 3 Chris's in the story- Chris/Crystal, Chris/Donnelly and at that point one of Maku's brothers is Chris. While riding home one day I realised that his name was actually Dominic Lea, which made a lot more sense as to why he's never been able to find out anything about who he was before he ended up on the street. The Stephen part is because one of my friends from college was called Stee Lea, but we all called him Steely. I thought a little nod in his direction was just right.
2. His parents were killed by a mummy's curse.
Um, ok, so I kind of made up his backstory in parts... this bit came from when I was creating him and his parents in Sims3 and I realised that the only way to kill them off and make it work in terms of the narrative part of the story would be to have a mummy curse them and they die from that. It turns out that I liked it so much that I made it canon for the entire story universe, not just Sims!
3. He does have family who are still alive.
His parents had become estranged from their families after their marriage (married against the will of their parents) and so never saw or spoke of other family members. When the police found the dead couple and discovered the boy missing they contacted family to find out as much as they could. There are three sets of uncles and aunts and about eight cousins. He meets a couple of them over the course of the books, but has no idea. One ends up working at Martin's house and helping in the fight against the Kalmari.
4. He introduced Martin to the SandWish and to the Green itself
The Green is the shopping centre where the SandWish (and Maku) used to be. Donnelly already knew it well because of all the times he'd managed to get cheap food there. He'd thought Maku was about the same age as him and Martin and had no idea that she might actually be about... I think she's something like ten years older than him! I know she's six older than Richard.
5. Donnelly wants to be a games designer
Because Donnelly is always playing the games at the arcade and on the DS he wants to be able to design games when he's older so he can make a game that (in theory) he wouldn't be able to defeat the first time playing it. (I have a feeling that I'm going to allow him to do this one day!)
((It's now 3pm Tuesday... I fell asleep while writing!))
</u>Maku</u>
1. Maku does not have a middle name.
Because her parents were planning on having a dozen or so kids they decided that giving them each a middle name would just mean having to remember more names in total and they'd only end up forgetting which names they'd used as first names and which were middle.
2. She was born in Bristol.
Due to the way that I have been writing these books I haven't been mentioning exact locations, so while I know that it's set in London, England, everyone else can just say that it's set wherever they want it to be really. Maku was born in Bristol and moved to London for university. Nate, her boyfriend at the time, went with her.
3. She would eat just about anything if it was covered in gravy.
Maku isn't a fussy eater, but she is a funny eater. When she was younger she could be convinced to eat just about anything and everything so long as it was liberally covered in either gravy, curry or (for sweet things) custard. She has got better about this over the years, but she still will eat things that she doesn't like as long as she covers them.
4. She ends up having at least 12 kids.
While playing Sims 2 I had Maku and Richard get married and have children. They ended up having a number of twins and each time I decided to make this canon. So (excluding her first child) she has two single births, three sets of twins, a set of triplets and then another single. I have names for all of them.
5. She actually has dragon blood.
Maku's dad was dragon-kin, and each of his children got a little of his genes. The boys all have a slightly extended life span, but Maku's youthfulness, her hair and the fact that she lives a LOT longer than a human really should be able to, are all thanks to dragon blood.
Richard
1. He does not like water.
I ended up creating this during the 100 drabbles of summer last year; he is close to being hydrophobic, though he is able to cope with baths and showers, and he does like the rain. Maku is the first to realise it and is very nice about it. Katalin mocks.
2. Animals tend to like him
Not all animals, and not straight away, but they take to him a lot quicker than they would other people. This isn't any sort of magic, he just knows how to pitch his voice and use body language to put animals at ease. It's a shame it generally doesn't work with humans
3. He doesn't 'get' flirting.
Richard doesn't know how to flirt, and he doesn't realise when people are flirting with him, which causes him a lot of problems in the future when a number of young women (and not a small number of men) get the wrong idea about his intentions and think that he is receptive to theirs. Richard is always VERY confused about this!
4. He only ever uses Katalin's full name.
Richard and Katalin do not get on with each other, and so she tends to call him by various nicknames and he only ever calls her either Kathelina or LeFae.
5. He really doesn't like having to wear shoes.
He'll wear them if he has to, but he would much rather walk around barefoot. Socks are only just bearable.
Katalin
1. She has never particularly liked her name.
Neither the name that she was officially give (Kathelina), nor the name that her father would have rather used (Katalin) appeal to her and so while she tells Maku and the others to stop coming up with stupid nicknames, most of the time she actually prefers them to her actual name. These days she does not like being called Kalmari at all.
2. She can speak three languages at least semi-fluently.
She's fluent in English (speaking, listening, reading and writing), Japanese (speaking and listening) and French (reading and writing). She never uses the French and only uses the Japanese when she, Martin and Richard are having conversations they don't want the others to understand.
3. She still eats a proper balanced meal every evening if she is not with the others.
Katalin had a very strict diet while in the Kalmari, as did Richard and Martin, and when cooking for herself at home she will make herself a meal that fits the regulations she would have had to meet. She honestly likes the food.
4. Every phone she's owned has been bought by someone else.
Katalin doesn't really see the point in owning a mobile phone and probably wouldn't have one at all except for Martin insisting that it would be a good idea. He and Maku had both been responsible for buying her a phone at one time or another (often replacing one that she's lost or broken.
5. Her surname is a bit of a mystery.
Because her father died long before Katalin started wanting to know about her birth family, she has no idea where her surname comes from. She knows that it is French and that it probably means fairies, but she doesn't know if there is French ancestry or if there is any fairy kind in her background. And yes, she would quite like to know.
Crystal
1. Doesn't really have a gender.
Shapeshifters are able to change every single part of themselves including their reproductive organs and so Crystal chooses to be female
2. Has been male more times than female.
On visits to the human realms Crustal saw that it was often easier for men to get by than women and so tended to choose a male form for the sake of ease.
3. Is older than Amber by just over half a millennium.
Because it's difficult to keep track of ages when constantly changing your physical age Crystal probably isn't even aware of this little fact, not that it would matter even if they both knew.
4. Does not always use the same name(s).
Although Crystal chose that name because it could be used for both a male or female (which is typical of Shifter names), it is not the one that is used every time when in the human realms because it is not always suitable for the time or place, however, it does tend to be the one to fall back on, and it's the one used in the Dragon realms.
5. Has been (locally) famous a number of times.
In various times in the human realms Crystal has garnered some fame through local TV stations, radio, newspapers and other such media, but doesn't tend to talk about it.
6. It's sometimes really hard to remember to keep gender neutral when writing from Crystal's point of view!
Amber
1. She was born into a little tribe in Africa.
She had no idea that she was dragon-kin until she was ten years old. It was a rather big surprise and it took her a long time to get used to being in her dragon form instead of her human one.
2. She's been married over a hundred times.
Dragonites, like Shifters, spend a lot of the time in the human realms living human lives and so she has often met, dated and married men, she's even adopted children a number of times.
3. This is the first time that Amber has had a relationship with a girl.
Although Crystal could be a boy if they wanted, they have both agreed that the want she to be a girl in their relationship. They are both learning what it all means.
4. She used to have a big family.
Dragonite families do tend to be big; Amber had six brother and eight sisters before the war that destroyed their home, and now the only ones left at her mother and youngest sister.
5. She enjoys learning new things.
Amber is the sort of person that regularly signs up for adult courses at the local colleges and she really doesn't mind when Maku signs her up for a few either.
Martin
1. Doesn't really grow facial hair.
He tried growing a beard once and only got a few scraggly hairs on his chin. He likes not having to shave every day, but he hates that even Donnelly gets "manly stubble"
2. Could be a wonderful cook if he had more patience.
Martin is a very quick learner, and a careful cook, and he likes to try new things, but because he doesn't have the patience to stand and wait for something to be cooked, or to carefully mix things together to make something just right he just sticks with things like scrambled eggs and other very simply recipes
It has been over a week since I started this due to the fact that my netbook had to be taken for repairs, as did my housemate’s laptop and so I leant her mine and I was using a very old mostly knackered one. I finally have the netbook and laptop back though, and she has hers, so all is good and I can get on with this.
3. Really is incredibly lazy.
A lot of jokes are made about how lazy Martin is, and the truth is that he really is as bad as he pretends to be. The reason that he normally doesn’t get up until noon is because he can’t be bothered to get up, the reason he likes films so much is because he doesn’t actually have to do anything in order to enjoy them. His skill in gymnastics is simply because he had to do it with the Kalmari and so ended up being good at it.
4. He is gay.
Because of the way Martin sees life he always says that he knows what he likes at the moment and who he likes, the who being Donnelly, but the truth is that he is only attracted to men and this doesn’t change over the years.
5. He would kill anyone he had to if someone dared to hurt his friends.
While he tends to be fairly calm and collected when it comes to actually dealing with the Kalmari, or at least fighting against them, if any one of them tried to hurt his friends, and particularly Donnelly, he would kill them all.
Originally I was going to have them kidnap Donnelly, but Martin’s reaction was so extreme I realised that I had to change it