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rthstewart) wrote2012-01-22 05:53 pm
Birds, cats, and self referential characters
Also, festivids has gone live and omg what a delightful time suck, including an awesome video of Maru the cat (yes, Maru has his own fandom now). Though if the octopus that stole the camera can have his own Yuletide fic, why not, right?
Work on Big Bang proceeds ever so slowly though I finally broke 20,000. I'm swimming in background material and leave a trail of World War 2 texts in my wake. I've been in a funk and have considered and rejected overly dramatic expressions.
Two things, so help me F-list, you are my only hope. First, I need original poetry, such as what, theoretically, Wing Commander Tebbitt might write to Susan. I've commissioned the Susan/Tebbitt shippers LARM and Metonomia, but if you are interested in contributing, I could use it.
As inspiration, this poem was written by SOE codemaster Leo Marks for spy Violette Szabo who was killed at the Ravensbrück concentration camp:
The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours.
The love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have,
Yet death will be but a pause,
For the peace of my years in the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.
Second, what do you when writing a point of view character and how he or she refers to himself or herself? I've stumbled over this before with certain characters. I don't have a problem with any of the canon characters and most of my OCs. However, with both Tebbitt and with Col. Walker Smythe, I have difficulty with them thinking of themselves by their first names. For example, from Walker-Smythe's pov:
He summoned Major al-Masri from Bletchley Park and the man arrived so promptly, George concluded the impatience to meet was mutual. He’d sent Tebbitt off to Thame Park for a refresher in wireless training and that would keep him occupied for a week – two if the latest agents there for training were attractive, which they invariably were. He did have to wonder if striking looks and trim figure where on the intake sheets Selwyn Jepson used when interviewing female candidates for insertion into France.
Instead of "he," could/should it be George? Or Walker-Smythe? Same thing with Tebbitt:
Tebbitt knew the origins of Jean-Louise. The Shoemaker, the master forger at the British Embassy in Washington, had gifted her with two beautiful sets of shoes – fake identities. She had lived one of them, assuming the identity of Mrs. Susan Caspian, for the last year. The other she would trot out and take for a spin occasionally and so he’d come to know Mrs. Jane Louise Ellis pretty well. Mrs. Ellis was from Leeds, younger than Mrs. Caspian, and her dress – usually red –cut low. She was a flirt and looked smashing on a man’s arm. Jane Louise Ellis had become Jean-Louise Lambert.
Where the surname Lambert had come from, he didn’t know, but as Colonel Walker-Smythe was fond of saying, the Queen of Pentacles that was Mrs. Susan Caspian knew how to keep her own counsel.
If not "he," should it be "Tebbitt" or "Reg?" This has really stumped me.
Last there has been an update in the vanity project, Girl Falls Into rth-verse Narnia story that greaves is undertaking and she had Jalur make a wonderful, wry appearance here.
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When I wrote in XF, I called Scully "Scully", although the general fannish understanding was that she probably thought of herself as Dana. Unless there was a specific point to be made, it just gets confusing to the reader if too many names get thrown about. (Witness the poor folks reading Dorothy Dunnett for the first time, who ask woefully, "Who is The Master of Culter and what does he have to do with this Lymond fellow?")
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(Anonymous) 2012-01-22 11:50 pm (UTC)(link)When writing in such a way, you are still a narrator. Not omniscient, but nonetheless narrator. You follow a particular person, but refer to him/her as "he/she" or use other neutral terms (name, profession etc.). It's all the rest of the world at what you look through his/her eyes. It may sound strange when one thinks about it, but look at any book which uses such a subjective third-person narration. You will see something like:
"Professor Zartiba ended reading the paper. He sighed heavily and asked an assistant to bring him another cup of coffee. How those idiots could publish that gibberish in a scientific journal? Well, not for the first, not for the last time he had asked himself that quesion." - complete mix of third- and first-person narration, if one would try to analyze that.
In your particular case: Tebbitt and Walker-Smythe may seem different to you than most of the other characters, but that's only because you normally refer to most of the others characters by their first names. When in that type of narration Edmund is a central character you call him "Edmund", but it has nothing to do with how he would normally call himself (which surely is not "Edmund" but "I". Do you use your name when you think about yourself?) Instead, it has everything to do with a fact that in whole narration you usually refer to Edmund as "Edmund".
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(Anonymous) 2012-01-22 11:54 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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Hmm. I will see if I can dig out anything I've written before (that doesn't make me cringe) and see if there's something suitable you can use for Susan and Tebbitt.
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I'm sorry. Should I be laughing my head off over this? I mean, really?
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Have another bowerbird, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/wpy/photo.do?photo=2712&category=2&group=1 just for the fun of it, and because the exhibition it comes from is currently just a few miles from me. I also think you'll like the cheetahs in the Behaviour: Mammals section.
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As far as pronouns, I usually mix he with the name, and generally they would think of themselves informally, so I'd go with Reg over Tebbitt. But, you can always use last names if you think that that the characters themselves would think of themselves by last name.
~LotL101
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I've got a little bit of a poem, but I don't know how good it is. About how long do you want them, and do you have a specific context in mind, or is anything love poem-ish is ok?
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One of the things I love about Walker-Smythe is that he is an expert at his expertise. He is always withholding, alway cautious to present the right appearance or character; he is excellent at breaking things down, understanding the elements, and manipulating to them to make sure everything goes the way he wants. What I *especially* love is the way this is evident in your text. Even though we the audience know that the Colonel is clever, detail-oriented and never misses a trick, it's not until we get inside his POV that we know how extensively analytical he is -- almost to the point of obsessive! -- and how deep his thoughts, theories, and resources are. The best part is that none of the other characters are aware of the full extent of this. Everybody knows not to *under*estimate him, but nobody can really begin to estimate him either. The Colonel's front is just that. Even Susan would say that you can't really know a spy, especially an old and clever one like Walker-Smythe. His POV is great because it's the first pure glimpse of his character we see: without the wall, without the careful presentation, and what we learn is that the Colonel is an intensely complex man with an astounding analytical nature. The person we see is bigger and deeper than every other character guesses, even those with great respect for him. Since everybody calls him Walker-Smythe or just the Colonel, it makes perfect sense that in his own headspace, he's George. Only George calls himself George, since the only person who can really know a spy is himself.
As for Tebbitt -- he's young, a man's man, and a soldier. Everyone calls him Tebbitt and certainly during this war he is thinking of himself as Tebbitt. His mother calls him Reginald. People like Gladys might call him Reginald. Girls would call him Reg if they didn't meet him while he was wearing his uniform. His sisters call him Reg. His friends call him Tebbitt, and his boyhood friends miiiiiiiiiiiight call him Reggie but please don't ever write that! For Tebbitt there's considerably less depth, less separation of self, and I feel like it's just his personality to be kind of easy to see through, easy to understand. But don't get me wrong! I still adore Tebbitt and find him beautiful, compelling, and plenty complex, but in a far more usual way compared to the mystery of say, Susan or the Colonel.
On the scale of complexity, I usually start with Tebbitt at the bottom, then Susan, then the Colonel and then Asim, though I sometimes think I should switch the top two because Asim's reasoning can be at times be simplified by spiritual concepts. Meanwhile the Colonel is the type to keep splitting subatomic particles into smaller sub-subatomic particles. Where Edmund fits on this list I am unsure... I think I want to put him between Tebbitt and Susan. The feel I get from your Edmund in particular is that he applies extremely complicated reasoning to address every detail, but ultimately reaches a black and white conclusion.
idek what I used all these paragraphs for. Tebbitt is Tebbitt and Walker-Smythe is George!
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Thank you my friend.
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(Anonymous) 2012-01-23 10:15 pm (UTC)(link)Doewe
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Does that make any sense?
Jean-Louise Lambert
(Anonymous) 2012-01-24 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)Could it become "Jeanne-Louise"? (But I wouldn't want you to go to a lot of trouble to change it.)
ClaireI
Re: Jean-Louise Lambert
This is all I have to say