Let's take it from the top

Cymbeline has started a complete rewrite.

Yes.

I've been thinking ever since I wrote this prologue a few nights about posting it on here for everyone's opinion. What's this, you say? This, my friends, is an ambush! Oops, sorry. An Allan line got sneaked in there! How did that happen?! No, this isn't an ambush. That would be fun, but this, my friends, is a novel, which you should have already guessed! I'll give you a brief overview of what this particular novel is about.

My journalism teacher would be proud of me--I'm going to explain this using the five W's and the H of reporting. Ready? :)

Who--the main characters are Tresalde, the book loving, rather shy, but with an extreme sense of justice 14-year old MC (it's a guy); Saphira, a pirate and the ruthless, cruel, and angry captain of The Poison Ivy, who kidnaps Tresalde in order to help her find gold; Julian, Tresalde's half brother who's obsessed with becoming a world-class fencer; Elliot, Julian's brother and Tresalde's half brother, the oldest of the three of them who's pretty much got a level head and thinks clearly; Isabel, a friend of the family's from Spain, who claims that Saphira murdered her father; and Miriam, Tresalde's mother and Elliot and Julian's stepmother. (If any of you remember this post, there was another character, Finna! What happened to her? I cut her. Completely. She just didn't fit into the story. Sorry, Finna.)

Oh, and by following that link above, you can see pictures of my characters!

What--Pirates.

When--1764.

Where--Apeci (an island in the Atlantic, near Spain and Portugal, that I made up); the waters of the Atlantic; and possibly Spain and Portugal.

Why--Saphira wants gold, and since Tresalde is so smart for his age (I assure you, he's not a nerd), she kidnaps him so he can help her find it. Naturally, his brothers and mother don't take so well to this, and go after Saphira to rescue him. Joining them is Isabel, a friend of the Cervantes' from Spain. She says Saphira murdered her father, and she is determined to avenge his death. (I'm still working on that bit)

How--well, the story isn't finished yet, is it? You'll just have to wait. :)

Alright, so now you have an idea of this beloved novel of mine! Seriously, I just love Tresalde and Saphira. Their relationship is like one I've never written before. It's not romantic--he's 14 and she's 21 or 22--but it's one of tentative friendship. Saphira is holding so much bitterness inside from an abusive past. She doesn't want to let anyone in, and she covers up her hurt with anger and control and when it comes to it, physical blows. She's quite a piece of work. But, excepting perhaps Aeronwen, she's my favorite female character that I've created. And where does Tresalde come in? He both loves and hates her. She kidnaps, mistreats, abuses, and hurts him. Some kind of gal, right? But he sees something in her that no one else has seen, and he wants her to open up. He wants there to be healing for her, despite everything she's done to him.

The thing I love about Tresalde is how much strength, emotional and not physical, he has. One of my favorite lyrics is from Bryan Adam's You Can't Take Me--"Don't judge a thing till you know what's inside it, don't push me, I'll fight it." Tresalde doesn't look like a fighter. He reads books. And Saphira and everyone else mistake him for someone who doesn't fight back, whose opinion doesn't really matter. But he's built of stronger stuff than that. They judge him before they know what's really inside him. Did that make sense? I don't think so. I guess no one can understand a writer's character like the writer herself. Those lyrics describe Tresalde amazingly well, but only I can understand how well.

Alright, I've gotten really side-tracked! Here's the prologue I wrote for this the other night. Let me know what you honestly think.

Cymbeline

prologue

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; red sky in morning, sailors take warning.”

The old sailors’ rhyme came to mind as she watched the red sunset with an impassive face. Behind her, crewmen rushed to complete their tasks before the evening meal, raising and lowering sails and swabbing the decks to make sure that The Poison Ivy stayed spotless. Now and then she would turn around and shout an order or scold them to move faster. They cast their eyes to the deck with worried looks and never argued.

Once, one of them had argued. Ichto was still famous among the men for having stood up to their cruel, abusive captain. Her anger at him for questioning her authority had been that of the cold, stone-hard stare that was reserved for only her angriest moments. The men sometimes feared her more when she got that look than in her violent fits of passion and rage. Ichto had been let off easily; the captain dropped him off at the next trading town they came to on the mainland with only the clothes on his back and his name on his tongue. They hadn’t heard from him again.

But after that, no one argued with the captain.

“Good weather tomorrow,” said a voice from behind her. It was Edgaro, her first mate and the only person on the ship she really trusted.

“It seems so,” the captain replied shortly. She didn’t turn her head or look at him, her gaze on the red horizon unwavering.

Edgaro checked himself and stepped back. If she had wanted to talk, she would have, but trying to force the captain to talk when she didn’t want to was like placing yourself in front of a lion that hadn’t eaten for days.

“Edgaro,” she called back, but she didn’t turn around. Her first mate turned to face her back. It was a while before she spoke, first lifting her head towards the sky and then running her hands along the smooth grain of the railing. Finally, she asked, “Is there news?”

He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. Had he not been her first mate for so long, he certainly would have been fearing for his job at that moment. But he was too valuable for her to let go, and she knew that. “No,” he said. “There hasn’t been any news.”

She nodded silently. Edgaro walked away to finish his evening tasks, and the captain continued to watch the sunset.

__________________________

Let me know how I can improve it! Improvement is always good. :)

Oh, and here is where I exhibit my incredible graphic making skills once more! Click on it to see it fully. The words are from You Are More by Tenth Avenue North.

In the black and white photo is Julian, Isabel is with the black hair, Tresalde is the blond dude who looks like he's screaming, or singing, Elliot has the white scarf thing-y, Miriam is in the purple dress, bending down, and Saphira is Keira Knightley in the awesome pirate outfit.

As they would say in my novel, since Spanish is spoken sometimes...buenas noches!

I love them

{be prepared for a really, really long post.}

You know you love them too. They make you laugh. They make you cry. They make your jaw drop at the twists in the story. They're feisty and they're unique and most importantly, they're real.

I won't ever, ever get out of how much I love characters. I like to think of them as my family. Now, don't judge--I bet you do the same thing! Whether they're your own characters or those in your favorite book or tv show, you love them like your own brothers and sisters.

I've got a huge taste of that last weekend. I slept over at my buddy Molly's (who is also like a sister to me ♥) and we did PB almost non-stop. These characters are at the moment undoubtedly my favorite group of characters, perhaps because I helped create them. :) They have quirks, they have fights, they have magical powers, and basically every episode something really bad happens, but it's alright. Everything will turn out in the end. :)

Phoenix Burning

Tiegan (Selena Gomez), Aeronwen (Bridget Mendler), Ciaran (bottom left, Joseph Kennedy), Aveari (top right, Skandar Keynes), Hadyn (b+w, Harry Lloyd), Erik (next to Tiegan, Bradley James), King Geraldo (top middle, Anthony Head), and Mr. Smid

BBC Robin Hood

This was my summer show. I actually started watching maybe sometime in February 2010, and saw the season two finale in August or so. After I'd been watching it for a while, I told Molly about it. The rest, as they say, is history. I think part of the reason I love this show so much was that I "was Djaq"--aka, she was my make-believe alias, all summer. And we have so many inside jokes from it, that just makes it more special. :) We've gotten so many of our favorite quotes from this show:
"I'm good with nuns" --Allan
"Don't tell me to shush, we're looking for a tree in a forest!!" --Much
"Earn your keep!" --Guy to Allan
"I can feel a song coming on!" "No! No song! Absolutely no song!" --Much and Robin
"SUSSEX! I have lost SUSSEX!" --The sheriff
"You could've had my eye out!" --Allan to Marian
"SLEEEPPPPPP" --Allan
(notice how many of these come from Allan? He's just that awesome.)

(self-proclaimed Hoodie xD)

If there's one thing the BBC can do, it's create incredible characters. (they can do a lot more than that, but characters are, as always, my favorite ♥)
However, I'm not including pictures from season three, because season three was atrocious, and it had Tuck and Kate in it, and Tuck is one of the worst characters I have EVER met. He's completely awful *blech*

Robin and Much

The gang

This is the best Robin Hood video I've ever seen. It's just beautiful. Even if you don't like/don't watch RH, watch it anyway :)

Larkrise to Candleford

The amazing thing about this show is that you feel like a part of these characters' lives. This is the one show my whole family (mom, dad, sister, grandmother, and me) watch together. If it's Friday night, one of us will say, "Larkrise?" and everybody else is just like, "YES!" I know I've said this countless times before, but I must repeat: these characters are so real. I warn you: if you start watching this show, you'll be hooked for all three seasons (and there's a season 4 coming out! Eep!)

Dorcas and Laura

Robert and Emma

Laura and Alf

Larkrise and Candleford (those are the names of the two places in the show--Larkrise is a small hamlet/village out in the countryside, and Candleford is the merchant town eight miles away. The show is about the different characters in each place and their interaction with one another.)


The Queen's Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

My goodness. This woman is a genius. Her books, set in a Byzantine-Greek world, are so political they'll make your head spin. Yet she creates characters who keep you guessing throughout the entire book. You'll be shocked by the endings of at least two of these books. You think you know what's going on, and then boom, something blows you away and it turns out that the characters had something completely different planned the entire time.

Gen, without a doubt, makes it onto my list of top-ten all time fictional heroes.
Who else is on that list, you ask? Well, since you asked so nicely... (this isn't in particular order)

Eugenides (aka Gen)
Allan a Dale
Ciaran de Reinwick
Merlin (tv show, Merlin)
Sophos (The Queen's Thief)
Percy Jackson (you know where)
Finn (books of Bayern)
Lee Colbert (The Book of Jane)
Sheftu (Mara, Daughter of the Nile)
I'm gonna go have to go with Merry from LoTR, though I do like Troy from HSM. Don't laugh, even though I know you will. :P

Anyways! You distracted me--shame on you. Let's continue, shall we?


There's only a handful of characters in this book--90% of the time it's just Gen, the magus, Pol, Sophos, and Ambiades.

This was my least favorite in the series, but I think I might like it better upon a second read, which I plan to do as soon as I finish rereading The King of Attolia. :) Sadly, Sophos isn't in this one, and he's awesome.

As I mentioned before, I'm reading this for a second time. This is the only one of the books that has Costis in it, which is too bad, cause Costis is great even if he has no sense of humor. I suppose he wouldn't really have a place in the other books, though.


The main character in this book? Sophos. Yes. We've waited since book one for him to return, and he FINALLY has. Sophos is probably my favorite example of how much a single character can grow and change within a story. Half of the book is told in first-person by him, and such a charismatic, completely real voice. It's like he's really talking. And I loved that even with all the changes he went through in this book, and how he could take down a man with one hit, he's still shy, blushing Sophos. :) He's so different by the end, but I still love him.
This book was actually a lot better the second time around. The first time I read it I was disappointed by it, expecting more, but when I read it again a couple weeks ago I loved it a lot more, and it's earning a place among my favorite books. :)

I wish I knew Megan Turner's secret for creating characters the way she does.

Merlin

Of all the characters in this show, my favorite is the title character, Merlin. You may think he's dorky looking, but he could take you down with less than one blow (or so he says.) He's really friendly, kind, and I would love to have him as a brother or friend. Plus, he's hilarious. :)
Arthur is hilarious as well, and he's handsome, but what bothers me is that he's so ignorant about who Merlin really is (Merlin has to keep his magic a secret, or he'll be killed by King Uther, who hates magic). And when Arthur finally grows up and learns something in an episode, in the next episode, he's back to his old snotty prattish self.
But I do admit that I love him. :) He's a pretty good character.
More annoying than Arthur, though, is Gwen. I liked her in the first season, but in the third season, she's gotten so dry. She just has no personality, and I cannot include in my list of favorite characters. There's no spark, no life to her. She's not right for Arthur.
Morgana is pretty awesome--she's completely different in season three, which I think is cool, cause she's more vital to the show now. The plot with her can get old at times, but she has more of a place now.



Arthur, Guin, Morgana, and Merlin

Elyan, Gwaine, Merlin, Arthur, Lancelot, Leon, and I don't know who the other dude is (this is a poster for the season three finale)

Arthur, Merlin, Morgana, and Morgause

Uther, Arthur, Merlin, Gaius, Morgana, and Guin

So really, Merlin is one of my all-time favorite characters, and Arthur's pretty good, but the others can't make the cut. :( (Gwaine is really cool, but he's not a regular, and not quite cool enough)

I did a post on Merlin a while back, which you can read here.

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I think that's enough for now. :) Tell me about some of your favorite characters!

I do believe in magic

The past couple of days, many posts regarding The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader have been appearing quite frequently on my dashboard. I am not here to give you a review of this movie. I am here to say that the latest installment of Narnia was...

incredible.

i'm still trying to process everything. did i love this movie? i'm not sure yet. i certainly didn't hate it. but i think for now it just needs to sink in. and you can be sure that when it comes out on dvd, i'll be watching many times over.

it also left me in quite a daze that i still haven't woken up from. i'm still stuck in narnia. i hope i never wake up.

But this movie also inspired me. Last night after we got back I turned on my laptop and started writing more of Enslaved, and an onslaught of ideas is now upon me. These movies have been a huge inspiration for me with my writing.

So, I'll leave you now with the words of Peter Pan:

I do believe in magic, I do, I do!

do you?