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masterofmidgetsThis week in NaNo, we worked on creating characters, which was pretty neat. The main exercise we did was a group character sketch thing - we started with one random piece of characterization, and then people shouted out details until we had a full character drawn out. Our first character was a 22-year-old redheaded volleyball player named Alex who grew up on the run from the Russian mob with his vacuum salesperson/Vegas showgirl mom. The second character was a girl named Audean who ended up sounding more or less like what would happen if I reproduced. I got bored after and ended up writing a little bit of her.
If I ask myself when it started, I have to say it's when my mother named me Audean.
It could have been worse, I guess - when I was younger and still got stuck off in the kids' corner at all the festivals, the other kids and I would have Weird Name Horror Story Contests, and it was always a shock how close I came to being Rainbow Moonbeam or Ashk'raka'dan or Renesme. My mom at least had the sense to name me something that normal people could pronounce and didn't giggle too hard at. But I still used to dread roll call the first day, when teachers would get to my name and pause that extra beat that I knew was them thinking "her name is what?"
I used to wish my name was Elizabeth, Tiffany, Amanda, Rachael, Kasey - names that went with nice, ordinary girls, pretty and popular enough to get by, girls who giggled over pop stars at lunch and got to second base with their boyfriends by junior year. But I looked...well, exactly like you'd expect an Audean to look, mousy brown hair pushed back behind my ears, muddy hazel eyes that you could never see behind my gold-rimmed glasses, face that no one would think of twice. No matter how many times I complained to my mom, she still mostly bought me jeans and sweater vests.
It didn't help that I'd spent most of my childhood and a good portion of my teenagerdom being dragged by my mom to just about every geek event she could find - SCA Feasts, sci fi conventions, pagan retreats, filksings, you name it, we did it, and knew twenty other people on the circuit. I won't say it wasn't fun, but it doesn't give you a lot of common ground when everyone else at the table is talking about Girl Scouts and the closest you can come is the first year you got to go to the Great Western War.
When the rest of the girls in your class are talking about the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, and you're talking about Kate Rusby and Wolfstone, you start to realize you maybe aren't on the same wavelengths.
For a long time after I was old enough to see how much I didn't fit in, I resented my mom and her determination to force me outside of the mold, as she used to put it. I thought that if I could have one thing, any thing, in the world, it would be to be an average, typical teenage girl who never thought of anything but which movie stars were the hottest and what she was doing on the weekends.
That all changed the day I came home to find a knight sitting at my kitchen table.
DDDDDDDDX THE STANFORD BOOKSTORE FAILS I HAVE HOMEWORK I CAN'T DO BECAUSE I HAVE NO TEXTBOOK
ALSO I HAVE A SONG ABOUT THE BLACK DEATH STUCK IN MY HEAD WTF?
If I ask myself when it started, I have to say it's when my mother named me Audean.
It could have been worse, I guess - when I was younger and still got stuck off in the kids' corner at all the festivals, the other kids and I would have Weird Name Horror Story Contests, and it was always a shock how close I came to being Rainbow Moonbeam or Ashk'raka'dan or Renesme. My mom at least had the sense to name me something that normal people could pronounce and didn't giggle too hard at. But I still used to dread roll call the first day, when teachers would get to my name and pause that extra beat that I knew was them thinking "her name is what?"
I used to wish my name was Elizabeth, Tiffany, Amanda, Rachael, Kasey - names that went with nice, ordinary girls, pretty and popular enough to get by, girls who giggled over pop stars at lunch and got to second base with their boyfriends by junior year. But I looked...well, exactly like you'd expect an Audean to look, mousy brown hair pushed back behind my ears, muddy hazel eyes that you could never see behind my gold-rimmed glasses, face that no one would think of twice. No matter how many times I complained to my mom, she still mostly bought me jeans and sweater vests.
It didn't help that I'd spent most of my childhood and a good portion of my teenagerdom being dragged by my mom to just about every geek event she could find - SCA Feasts, sci fi conventions, pagan retreats, filksings, you name it, we did it, and knew twenty other people on the circuit. I won't say it wasn't fun, but it doesn't give you a lot of common ground when everyone else at the table is talking about Girl Scouts and the closest you can come is the first year you got to go to the Great Western War.
When the rest of the girls in your class are talking about the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, and you're talking about Kate Rusby and Wolfstone, you start to realize you maybe aren't on the same wavelengths.
For a long time after I was old enough to see how much I didn't fit in, I resented my mom and her determination to force me outside of the mold, as she used to put it. I thought that if I could have one thing, any thing, in the world, it would be to be an average, typical teenage girl who never thought of anything but which movie stars were the hottest and what she was doing on the weekends.
That all changed the day I came home to find a knight sitting at my kitchen table.
DDDDDDDDX THE STANFORD BOOKSTORE FAILS I HAVE HOMEWORK I CAN'T DO BECAUSE I HAVE NO TEXTBOOK
ALSO I HAVE A SONG ABOUT THE BLACK DEATH STUCK IN MY HEAD WTF?
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Date: 2008-10-08 12:56 pm (UTC)