Waking in the dead of night Hold onto this life Running to what’s wrong or right Seems to be a thin line Fighting for a wasted love Fighting to survive Oh won’t you please forget Won’t you please forget These are the dog days
Why do you write who you do / what drew you to them?
As someone who writes 35 characters on this blog, choosing just a few is rather difficult, but I shall try to keep the examples limited for sake of brevity.
I often say that when it comes to writing, the characters come to me. It is less a matter of me choosing them and more a matter of realizing exactly who they are and wanting the world to see them through my eyes.
When it comes to canon characters like Jack Sparrow and Horatio Hornblower, the first thing that catches my attention is the intelligence the character possesses and how those around them respond to it.
In Jack’s case, his brilliance is often thwarted by the presumption of madness – he is underappreciated by everyone around him and rather than be discouraged he simply manipulates that fact to his advantage.
By contrast, the world sees Horatio’s brilliance for what it is and both lauds and punishes that intellect based on circumstance – yet Horatio himself only seems to have one or two moments where he considers himself to be abundantly clever. In most instances, he seems like a young man barely holding himself together under incredible pressures – which is an accurate summation of matters.
I find characters like these to be challenging – I am hardly the mathematical, tactical nautical genius Horatio is nor can I think in thirty circles around my opponent like Jack – which means that to embody these characters and bring them to life I have to be able to find ways to exhibit who they are without drawing attention to what the author lacks.
Challenging myself is my favorite aspect of writing – it has helped me grow as a person and witness other perspectives through the effort it takes to manipulate the world through a whole other lens. My goal is always to entertain – both myself and the person I am writing for – but also, while remaining aware that anyone can see these writings. I endeavour always to make something I enjoy and am proud of – and hope that it will pass muster for others.
When it comes to characters I create – be they characters with only one or two lines in a show who I bring life to like Theodore Groves, Jane de Bac or Daniel Gillette – or characters I have drawn up from nothing more than a single concept, generally speaking my point of focus is why should anyone else care.
I often get ideas for characters and start drawing them up, but will ultimately abandon them if I cannot answer that question. Theodore Groves caught my attention with the line, “Do you think he plans it all out, or just makes it up as he goes along?“
Prior to that I had no idea who he was or any focus on him. He was a face in the background and I didn’t even realize he was a recurring character until I tried to find out more about this sassy lieutenant. There is very little about him, and since the one thing that jumped out at me was his willingness to openly sass Cutler Beckett, I needed to bring that element of him to life in a way that would make him engaging enough that other people would start to care about who Theodore Groves is.
And that – is the process for all of my characters. One thing generally catches my attention, and the rest is formed based on needs I feel need to be fulfilled while also crafting something that will hopefully be engaging and entertaining for more than just myself, but anyone who takes the time to catch a glimpse of them.
This was for @lordedrington‘s Pa but also it’s a good Munday vibe so here ya’ll go.
☁ : Describe how they would spend a stormy, overcast/rainy day.
Prior to and following his time in Bedlam and the plantation, Thomas’ ideal method of dealing with rainy days involves reading – sometimes even writing – before a fire run low behind the grate, giving off more heat than light. Hours spent on the couch, or even wrapped up in a blanket on the floor, lost in the pages of other people’s ideas is – and has always been – his idea of paradise.
Of course, prior to the traumatic events he underwent, such luxury as this could not always be afforded what with his burning passion for politics. Rainy days were optimal times for parties and get togethers as everyone wanted to be indoors, gathered together somewhere warm and comfortable where entertainment was readily available and easily maintained. Due to the rarity of his indulgence in privately spent rainy days, they were to Thomas all the more ideal and precious when they were utilized.
Following his ordeal, how often Thomas is capable of indulging himself varies upon his verse and how he has healed – but it does remain his favored method of coping with the rain, regardless of where he is mentally or how he has recovered.
☢ : Describe a thought or dream that would cause them to have a mental meltdown.
Thomas has been a hurricane all his life. Though there have been periods of calm, the eye of the storm always passes into a new barrage of action. When he was young and ambitious, these tempestuous periods of activity would find focus in achieving his goals with passionate discourse and heated debates. Keeping up with him was like chasing a tornado – there was a thrill to be found in following a man who spoke such revolutionary ideals, provided there was never any pressure to commit to the actions they claimed to support by listening to a radical voice of reason.
He was never blind to the thrillseekers – never so naive as to believe that the men and women in his parlor were truly dedicated to his cause. They fancied themselves daring just to be there and he knew it – but it did not stop him from speaking his truth and praying to find the words that would shift the difference between a token presence and someone who truly believed change could be made possible. Though he knew them to be false in their commitments, he had never believed them all to be so false in their friendships – it was not the betrayal of his father that broke Thomas, so much as it was the ease in which the whole world seemed to have abandoned him to it.
No voice rose in his defense, no man or woman took action in any way shape or form to spare him from the horrors of Bedlam, the indignities of the plantation. When he thinks of those days in the parlour, the passions shared in conversation and the dreams voiced in hurried whispers, Thomas finds a Judas in every face. When he thinks of how easily he was written from the world he had once been such a volatile part of, rage consumes him to the point he can barely breathe for the force of it.
Hate is a powerful emotion – one of the hardest to overcome – for it requires the will to let go. Hate does not require forgiveness so much as it does the ability to breathe past the hurt – and for Thomas, it takes years to reach that point. Memories of the good days fill him with bile and fury, are painted so bitter and shallow he cannot see them in a kind light.
The act of healing comes in rebuilding himself from the ground up, for the man he was before brings him no comforts, the man he is now has no individuality left – and the man he becomes always depends on how he decides to direct his hatred and his hurt for all that was done to him, and what little was done for him in any way he could tangibly feel.
Following the events of Charlestown, Abigail responds to matters around herself very differently. Prior to being kidnapped by Lowe, held in a dungeon by Vane, sailing with Flint and his crew, she was positively petrified of pirates and anyone who looked like they could be a pirate.
Her father made them all out to be terrible, evil men who would burn, rape, and pillage anywhere they went – and that nobody was ever safe from their monstrous ways. That nobody could be, until all pirates were eradicated from the seas.
Back then, all it took was being impoverished to unnerve Abigail, who in her sheltered life had little means or reason to recognize the differences between poor and dangerous when both were described in the same ugly terms and descriptions.
Following her ordeal however, she began to look at her world more critically as much out of her newfound disillusionment as out of a need to survive. Depending on the course she chooses ( be it surgeon or author ) the things that unnerve her vastly differ.
To the surgeon, blood and gore hold little sway over her, and men she recognizes as violent and controlling toward women are met with a wary eye and a waiting blade. What concerns the surgeon is being found out in her own acts of silent, brutal murder. Her brand of justice requires an answer sooner rather than later, and being confronted with suspicions about her work and method is far more likely to make her nervous than unwanted advances.
Conversely, the author never obtained that same level of anger and hardness. She exorcises her demons every single day, and works hard to hold together the fabric of a world now torn, by weaving her narrative and hoping to find some semblance of peace. She does not fear death or pain – there is a horrible numbness within her that makes her face the threat of either with a cool, almost dissociative logic.
She feels like a ghost in her own skin and is convinced any physical suffering she faces now is meaningless in the grand scheme of her story. She is too lost and depressed to care – that is not to say she seeks out pain, or that she wishes for death. It is simply that the threat of these things do not move her, and her utterly emotionless response to them tends to be eerie enough to protect her, in the end.
She fears confrontations with her characters – is made most uneasy by the thought of discussing her inspirations with the men who inspired her in the first place. She is set on edge when asked about her thoughts and ambitions with her writing – in truth, talking about her works in general tends to bother her. She is losing her grip on the will and ability to converse with other people, losing herself to the world she is creating to supplant the one that she lives in, and the idea that she may be forced to face the reality of the men she has created is somewhat petrifying.
Silver’s greatest fear throughout his time alongside Flint was that one day, the man would learn the truth of him – and all would be lost. Knowing himself as he did, Silver knew it would be more profitable for Flint to dispose of him than it would ever be to keeping him around – especially after he learned the truth of the man’s past. Although he weaponized that truth immediately, there was a small part of him that did so knowing full well that were their situations reversed, Flint would do the exact same.
Silver never once deluded himself into thinking he had value to Flint in any capacities outside of that of tool. Once he as a tool ceased to be of any use to Flint, he would be discarded as Gates was. Considering the origins of their relationship, the idea of trusting Flint not to turn on him in the end was as mad to Silver as the fact Flint seemed to willfully allow himself to be lead by the nose at times.
In truth, Silver believed that part of why he got away with the things he did was because Flint considered him valuable enough at the time to excuse it. So long as he maintained usefulness, he was untouchable – there was just no telling when that usefulness might slip, and for that reason, Silver never once allowed himself to offer Flint so much as a single hint to who he had been prior to becoming John Silver in the first place.
Because even when he held Flint’s secrets in one hand, he knew those secrets would not destroy Flint the way his own secrets could be his complete undoing. Even once he knew Thomas Hamilton was alive, he had no guarantee he would be able to fully eradicate the threat Flint posed overall – because for as close as he got to Flint, as much as he hated to admit it, Flint in turn got close to him.
In short, Silver’s greatest demon throughout the entire story was both himself and Flint, and when the tale reaches its conclusion, there is a possibility that both demons could be faced – but it is, in all honesty, incredibly unlikely either man would allow for it.
After his time in the plantation, Thomas comes to realize rather swiftly that things he thought he missed – things he truly believed would bring him comfort – proved instead to be stifling and difficult to maintain and manage. This built within him a well of frustration and bitterness to which he had no true outlet that felt quite right or suitable to the situation.
He felt strangled by the expectation to be unchanged when in truth, he was nothing like what he used to be. And every time he felt himself grow frustrated with simple tasks that had once been methodical, natural parts of daily living, he was forcibly reminded of the fact there was no turning back the clock.
He hated remembering as much as he hated being frustrated and bitter. It was a compounded anger, cyclical and damaging as a hurricane inside of him. Although in various verses he does learn to find means and manners of managing and healing ( or compartmentalizing ) it is an early point of disaster that lingers and has occasional moments of returning to the fore, leading to enormous blowouts if only because of how long it has been since he felt himself spinning apart again.
Hal is not the most sentimental person. Leading the kind of life he does, he has learned not to get overly attached to material matters and to focus instead on immediate survival as well as long term planning. He has a frugal nature, and works hard to maintain a lifestyle that will be sustainable once he reaches a point where he has to retire from seafaring. He even has some coin stashed away in various places, waiting for him to gather up when the time comes.
The point he is at by the time our story starts is fairly close to the end of the road for Hal. He’s reached the point where he is ready to put an end to tromping around after younger men at sea, and set up shop somewhere. Legitimate business along the shore, be it a bar or an inn – maybe both, if he can swing it – but ultimately speaking, Hal does not want to go inland.
The smell of the sea itself is home to him – the sound of the waves as well. When he can no longer smell the brine or hear the crash, he grows uncomfortable – doesn’t feel right inside without those particular sensory inputs. He feels half whole without them, which is part of why he has pushed his career so damn long – he wants to make certain he has enough money to settle in a port city, because anything else just wouldn’t be worth living.
Mun Note: The city of Lamara has featured mostly in tales I’ve done on Discord due primarily to being too lazy to bring the verses featuring her to the blog. Lamara is a purely fictional island that has been designed for use in both POTC and Hornblower arcs. Any and all similarities to historical or present day cities is purely coincidental.
It is mentioned to visiting crews that leaving the city for the interior is not permissible without access granted by the House of Opal, and a guide assigned from the House of Jade. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which being the fact that individuals Lamara are responsible for making ‘disappear’ often live peaceably within the interior townsteads.
Beyond the city walls, the island is largely wilderness. Though regions of it have been irrigated and designed for self-sustaining agriculture, much of it is forest too thick to manage or rocky regions with craggy and uninhabitable soil. Among the rocks and within the forest are highly venomous serpents that pose incredible risk to people unfamiliar with the region and how to both avoid nests and keep an eye on the trees above.
Lemongrass line the safe paths, and are planted around homes and fields in order to discourage the snakes from entering areas inhabited by people. Walking off these paths is one of the major causes of deaths in the interior – though it is not just the snakes that pose such risks, they are the primary cause.
Ocean Archive 