crying shame

I'm not really one for crying. The only thing that reliably gets me is watching little kids sing. Not sure why that is...  Other than that it's in bed with the lights turned off. In private. Secret. I just don't go there very often at all.

But. I have this tough, bad-ass character Saxen (introduced a couple of posts down). Someone mentioned to me they thought it was a mary sue character based on me. I thought that over carefully (after my initial knee-jerk denial.)  I identify closely with her. But she isn't me.  She is a killer, she's been beaten, was raped in prison for years. She's a ranger. She does her job and shuts off the rest.

Except, sometimes she cries. And I, as an author, go WTF??  Crying? Why are you crying? What am I supposed to do with this? It's so not...her. I get the same sort of impatience a husband has with a wife weeping over a Hallmark commercial. Groan. Not again.

She cries over nothing, and yet it's for some reason. It must be, right? So far I can't find the trigger. I now she hates it. It shames her. But I'm not sure why yet. I guess I'll find out... Or her love interest will... heh heh.  Poor guy.

It's sort of like Aidan studying art history. If you know the guy, it would probably be the least likely major you would guess for him. But he's all into it. Like a parent of a kid who chooses "Literature" for a major, I tried to change it a couple of times. He couldn't make a decent living at it. He made the concession of adding an intensive lab on old painting restoration, but he wouldn't budge from art history.

What weird-ass thing has your character(s) done?

8 comments:

Christine said...

LOLOLOLOL!!!! She is not a "Mary Sue." No way.

She has a lot of depth and complexity. She cries around her husband because he is outside of that world where she has to hold things in all the time. He actually wants her to be feminine, and that side of her comes out around him because he makes it safe.

Plus, my characters just make women cry. They can't help it.

And he just loves calling her a "weepy demon elf maiden." And she's so sexy when her lower lip is trembling.

And he really gets sick of the bad-ass competent chick routine after a while. Really, sometimes he's tempted to smack her around just because she's so damn sure of herself.

Christine said...

Weird-ass things my own characters have done... hmmm. Ginger's temper surprises me many times.

And Faldur's NOT doing certain things and then totally losing it. I have a scene where he almost guts his lieutenant in front of the women, because he's so furious at him for betraying them. Then later he just holds everything in for such a long time, it's inhuman. Like he wants to torture himself.

Marenya falling in love with a certain person was a total suprise.

ssas said...

That's pretty funny actually. Good thoughts for how a certain someone will deal with her.

ssas said...

It is odd, because she has no idea that he likes her weepy and needy. She figures a little goes a long way with him. She tries hard to be competent around him because to her, he's so uber-confident. She's only just now able to tease a little bit about it, but not to his face, you notice...

She's only just figuring out how important it is to him that he gets to protect her.

Christine said...

He feels like a mess around her because he keeps screwing up. Like, um, what's happening at the moment.

ssas said...

But she totally approved of it at the time. Now she's just really worried about him.

Christine said...

Yeah, but fighting winged opponents is his forte. He's already got ideas for strategy, with support on the ground.

ssas said...

Yeah, that could be pretty cool. But he's probably not strong enough. And they'll have to do some bad stuff to get Asmodai to come out and play.

There are the other demons from the second book, though. They're winged. Invisible. Pretty bad ass.