The People that Live in My Brain, Part 2 - Rita

I visited the spot where she died today, in the student form that I adopted three years ago when the invasion happened. I don’t know how long I stood there, replaying the gruesome scene over and over again in my mind, further solidifying my hate for the aliens.
I SPENT YEARS ON THAT PLAN. All my watching, and waiting, and plotting, and pulling strings, ALL FOR NOTHING with one swipe of a death ray.
Does it count as mourning if I’m angry that I’M not the one who killed her? I’m not sure…
[excerpt from Rita's journal]

---

By the time I got outside, the lot was mostly empty, with a few exceptions.  I could see the football team wandering out to practice on their field, and I could hear the marching band warming up on the other side of the school.  The car with the dragon drawing was still parked next to mine.  I put my bag and my books in the back seat, and a voice spoke.

                “Ah.  I figured it was you, new girl.”

                I turned.  Rita was standing behind me, leaning against the nose of the dragon car.  Her arms were folded, and she was smirking.

                “I have a name you know,” I scowled at her, clenching my fist to make sure I was holding my keys before slamming the door shut.  “And what, is there a law against me parking in an open spot?”

                She rested her chin on her fist.  “No.  It just means you haven’t learned yet.”

                “Learned what?  What’s your deal anyways?”

                She just kept smiling.  “What?  Didn’t dear, gossiping Amy tell you everything about me?”

                “Just some silly rumors.”

                “Rumors have a seed of truth to them.”

                “Yeah, sure, whatever.  I’ll believe that when I actually see you fly.”  I tried to walk away, but the lanyard on my key ring was stuck in the door.  I swore under my breath and opened the door to free it.

                Rita heaved a dramatic sigh.  “Why are you so angry and hateful?  Is it because you’ve left your dear Tommy behind?”

                I dropped my keys and whirled around to face her.  “How do you know his name?”

                Her smile had a chilling edge to it.  “It’s not that hard to know when he’s always at the forefront of your mind.”

                I stared at her as she pushed off the front of the car and got in the driver’s seat.  I stared at her as she started the car, then winked at me through the window.  I stared at the car as she drove away, and finally noticed the pentagram painted in red on the trunk hood.

(excerpt from High School Witch [tentative title])

---

Rita is a character that continues to fascinate me, and she's one that I imagine with continue to to bother me and insist on appearing in things for years to come.

Her original idea was meant for a roleplaying campaign (I have a lot of characters like that...).  In this world, it's modern-day Earth--if modern-day Earth had had superheroes and super villains and had been taken over by an alien force.  :)  Rita's a witch--a magic user in the world of supers.  She started life in the 1300s, and was hunted as a witch then.  She developed a hatred for humans, discovered that she was ageless, and eventually turned into a super villain, and called herself Sorceress.

In the process, she managed to get a nemesis:  Emerald Flame.  The two fought until it appeared that Emerald Flame was killed in the alien invasion, and Rita swore her vengeance on the aliens for taking away her super.  Though recently, Emerald Flame came out of hiding, and the two have been forced to work together, much to Rita's horror.

Her current desire, other than to kill the aliens and kill her nemesis, is to become a dragon.  She's become rather good friends with the world's Last Dragon (he was the one who taught her about magic, several hundred years ago), and they are working together to improve their magical abilities and to rid the world of the aliens so that she can be transformed and become a proper dragon.  And I get the feeling she won't leave me alone until that happens.  ^^;  Though, we're not yet done with the campaign, and I'm excited to see where it will go from here.  :D

The other excerpt is something that I wrote just the other day.  Currently, I'm in two creative writing classes, and I have to write a novel in each of them.  I was trying to think of a second idea, when Rita stepped in and suggested something.  Rather nicely too, I must say.

The tentatively titled High School Witch is about Cat.  She's moved with her family to Suburbia (read:  an as-of-yet unnamed suburban town) during her senior year of high school, and left behind her boyfriend and all her other friends.  There, she meet Rita, who has a reputation for unnatural things happening around her, and for being cruel and for having amazing strength (she can "lay out flat any boy in the school").  While Cat is trying to survive through school, a mysterious arsonist moves closer to her town.  When the arsonist strikes in their town, Cat finds herself more suspicious of Rita than ever.

Rita's one of my newest characters, and still a lot in development, but she has 700 years of history for me to play with, so it's safe to say she'll show up over and over again.  It's a good thing I like her.  :)

People that Live in my Brain part 1 - Alonia

“State your name.”

                “Alonia Mathar.”

                “Age in Earth years?”

                “Twenty-four.”

                “Race?”

                “Human, I think.”

                Inwardly, I winced.  Did I really just say that out loud?  Great.

                The secretary raised a heavily penciled eyebrow at me.  “You think.  Ms. Mathar, you either are or are not a race.  And what exactly you are should be obvious.”  I sighed.  “Let’s try this again.  Race.”

                I hesitated only slightly.  “Human.”

                “There you go.  Was that so hard?”

                Perhaps.

---

That's an excerpt from the beginning of the novel I'm currently working on--Flying with Horus (tentative title), my first foray into science-fiction.  I started writing it for the class I took from Brandon Sanderson this past Winter semester, and it's been a lot of fun.

However, Alonia came to be quite a bit before that.  I joined a play-by-post campaign (where you are on an online forum, and each person posts what their character is doing.  Your character can react to the other characters, and there's a Game Master (GM) to control it all) that was set in the Lovecraft Universe.  Sadly, the campaign died after a while.

Alonia was a type of magic user who was able to control metal and degeneration (meaning she could make things rot and decay... a slightly odd combination, I know).  She came from a planet where magic users were killed outright, so when she had her Awakening (rather explosively... she killed her ex-boyfriend in the process), she ran to preserve her life. During the campaign, she was on the search for mystical towers of knowledge where she would be able to learn to better control her magic.  She's also a bit of a jerk who doesn't really like people, and her eyes change color according to her emotions.

When that campaign died, Alonia sat quietly in a corner of my mind for a long while until Sanderson's class.  How the idea and her change came about was pretty funny (at least, I think so).

How Sanderson's class worked was that we split into writing groups according to the genre of what we were writing.  The first group was a Science-Fiction group (the only one in the whole class), and they needed a couple more girls to join in.  On a whim, I jumped up and joined, and my first thought was:  What the heck am I going to write?

I came up with a plot line and I had been trying to fit in another character into that line--a technomancer that worked as an engineer on a ship was a fascinating idea to me.  However, that character just didn't quite fit into the story.  I thought and thought for days, trying to make it work, but it wasn't working, until I glanced through my list of characters.

Alonia fit the description perfectly.  She's enough of a novice with her magic, and enough of a jerk to fit perfectly in the protagonist role.  In the world(s) of Flying With Horus, she's a Hyperspace Mechanic--fitting for someone who can control metal.  She's still a jerk (it just works, trust me), but she's close friends with an alien named Zuril--he's based off the character I was original going to make my protagonist.  I kept her eye color changing with her emotions (it's a lot of fun to play with), but how she got her power is a different story entirely... and I'm not going to spoil anything.  You'll have to read it when it comes out.  :)

The characters in my brain are trying to take over and sometimes they succeed

As many of you know, I am a writer.  And, as such, I have many character (and concepts) and plots and scenes constantly bouncing around in my head, fueled by music, chocolate, and Dr. Pepper.
I've been thinking about my characters a lot lately, and I figured, hey, why not introduce you to some of them?  (This is also a good way to keep me sane and thinking straight through the end of the term and all the fun finals and papers and stuffs)

It's something new to try, and I'll aim for at least one character a week, maybe more depending on how things (aka life) go.

A lot of these characters are recent creations for roleplaying games I've been a part of, but a couple of them (like Alonia) have morphed into something more, and have insisted they star in their own short story/novel.

They all have a life of their own.  I'm just here to tell it.



List!
- Alonia Mathar (Flying with Horus and the Cthulhu (Lovecraft) universe)
- Rita Parker (Necessary Evil)
- Serimel (Dark Planes and The Horror Facing Sugrand)
- Diana Wyte (Shattered Earth)
- The Aprils (there are 3 of them):  April Derben (The Balance), April Zeeling (Shadow's Dawn), and April Cossak (Requiem's Awakening)
 - Kalec (Pillars of Eternity (female) and The Hero of Time (male))
- Mr. Wyton (Magical Botany)
- Dr. Vladsnik (How Dr. Vladsnik Got His New Assisstant)
- Vetra (Under the Dust)

This isn't really an extensive list, but all of them (with the exception of April Cossak) have been created in the time I've been in college, and all of them have played a part, however big or small, in shaping my style as a writer, and me as a person.

Oh hey look, another update

I feel like all I ever do are these updates, since I don't post often enough, haha

Mike
He's all graduated!  :D  Now he's got a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from BYU, and is applying for various grad schools (BYU, CU Boulder, USU, and Cal Tech).  At the beginning of the summer, he got a job working for the Heber Valley Railroad and he works there all the live long day.  He loves being on the train though, and helping out and getting to know a whole slew of people from all over the world.  His Portuguese skills have come in handy a couple of times!  He's been working on one of his train sets, and is currently building a model of Mt. Timpanogos out of paper mache.  He loves it.

Me
I have been "suffering" through Spring and Summer term, and I just have ONE MORE SEMESTER before I graduate in December!  I CAN SEE THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL AND IT'S MOCKING ME.  I made Merida's dress (from the movie "Brave") and went to go see that opening day with my friends.  I've gotten back into role-playing games and video games (it's still summer.  I need my sanity to get me through classes), and it's been a blast.  This summer, I'm taking a class called The Philosophy and Sociology of Rock and Roll, and it's the best class EVER.  A few weeks ago, I had a photoshoot with my awesome friend/old roommate Nena, and THAT was SO MUCH FUN.

Us
In March, Mike came with me and a bunch of my friends to Fannatiku Fest, a small anime convention in St. George.  It was his first con, and his first time cosplaying, and we both had fun!  At the end of May, we took 2 days to drive out to Colorado to go to my brother's graduation.  We camped overnight in the mountains and it was beautiful!  While we were there, we went on the Royal Gorge Railroad with my grandparents and DJ, and we had a ton of fun!  A few days after than, we celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary!  We haven't traveled after that (because of school for me and work for Mike), but my family's moved to Lehi, and we've been spending some fun times with them.  We're planning on going to Anime Banzai in October (an anime convention in Layton, UT), and we're very excited to be able to cosplay together again!

 At Fannatiku Fest in March.  We really did have fun, I promise.  XD

 Camping in the mountains near (ish) Glenwood Springs in May.  Mike wanted to have hot chocolate in the mountains, so we did.

Us with DJ at his graduation in May.

There's a fly-bug-type-thing in this room and IT WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE.

A much needed update

So... yeah, it's been quite a while since I've done anything on here!  I suppose it's time for an update on our lives.  :)

Michael

Mike just started his last semester for his undergrad at BYU!  He's soooooooo ready to be done now, he can hardly stand it!  Lately, he's been researching jobs and been bugged constantly about the GRE (heh heh), and really trying to decide what he wants to do once he finally graduates.  He'll be getting his BS in Mechanical Engineering (finally!) and minoring in Math and Family Life.  He loved having a Christmas tree up this year, and he loved having a train around it even more!  He's more or less looking forward to coming to his first convention with me at the beginning of March this year.

Sam

I've been really busy too!  I'll be graduating in December of this year (FINALLY), and I'm also trying to figure out what I want to do afterwards!  Not grad school for sure though...  lately, I've been sewing a lot and writing a lot as well.  I'm making costumes for both me and Mike for the convention in March (I'm sooooooooo happy that he's finally coming to one!) and I've been sewing some of my own personal "I-think-this-is-a-really-awesome-idea-so-I'll-just-make-a-costume-for-it" projects.  I'm taking a writing class with Brandon Sanderson (AMAZING author of series such as Mistborn, Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, The Way of Kings, and the author chosen to finish the Wheel of Time series), and I'm writing a novel this semester as well!  I'll be posting bits and pieces of that on here, 1,000 words at a time, if you want to read along!

Us

WE WANT SNOW.  Also, our 2-year anniversary is coming up in May!  We'll  see what we do for that later on...

Planes and Hurricanes

In case anyone was wondering, YES, we realize that Hurricane Irene could possibly hit CT at sometime.  But, we're leaving tomorrow morning, LONG before it's ever predicted to get here.  So, unless Irene decides to speed up and come straight for this coast, we'll be fine.

We'll actually probably be sitting in class, in Provo, when she hits here.  XD

But yes, our adventures in Connecticut have come to an end.  At least, for this summer.  We may come back.  Who knows?

But for now, we're excited to get back to the mountains and the nice DRY air.  School is another question entirely.  >.>

Update

It's the start of our 3rd-to-last week here in the Northeast!  Time has flown by pretty quickly.  Here's an update about us:

Michael:
Michael's still enjoying his internship.  He comes home smiling everyday and is excited to tell me all about the new things he learned or new program he wrote.  He loves taking walks everyday we can (when it's not boiling or raining).  He had a great time at the New England Air Museum--he was drooling almost the whole time!  :)  He's at the point now where he's ready to head back to Utah (no more humidity!), but he's not that excited to go back to school!  He just has one semester left, and is graduating in Dec. with a BS in Mechanical Engineering.  He's planning to get his Master's, but we haven't planned any further than that!

Sam:
I've been sewing a lot these past couple of weeks, and managed to almost finish my skirt for my next cosplay.  It's layered and fluffy and...  pink.  All I have left to do on it is hand stitch a bunch of pink bows all over it, then I'll be done!  The next piece I have to work on is my corset... and I'm kinda nervous about that.  I recently won a drawing at the local library, and walked away with a package of SHINY bookplates and 3 brand new books, one of which isn't even available to the public yet!  ^_^

Us:
We're both rather ready to get back to Utah and the mountains.  We miss the mountains, and the not-humid air, and our family and friends.  We do really like the ward we've been in though--everybody here is so nice and so sad that we're going to be leaving at the end of the summer.  Maybe we'll come back.  Who knows?

It's just started raining again.  It smells very nice.  ^^