Writing Meme: Day Seventeen.

Day Seventeen: Favorite protagonist and why!

Hm. I have a few, actually.

Gabriel.
Archangel Gabriel, the way I write him after exhaustive research and reading more scripture than I ever thought I would, is, in short, a brat. He gets along with his older brother Michael the best out of all his siblings and he and Michael have a very strong brotherly bond, they're best friends as well as brothers. Gabriel enjoys his vices - cigarettes, alcohol, sex, swearing - and even though he doesn't need food or drink to live, he enjoys indulging his culinary appetites. He's a soldier, a warrior, the General of God, second in command to Archangel Michael, and his carefree joie de vie can drop away in a heartbeat when he takes up his sword and goes to do battle. I like writing him because his turns of phrase are quirky and interesting, dialogue for Gabriel has always been a challenge because of his accent. I've decided that his vessel - as the angels in my writing take a human vessel in order to work on Earth without being detected as unusual - is from working class Britain, northern Londoner to be exact. His vessel was also a SAS General before Gabriel got permission to use his body for his own needs. The SAS General was dying of cancer and on his death bed, he gave Gabriel consent to use his body.

When it's not wartime, Gabriel plays pranks on his brother, loafs around bars and pubs, goes out to see bands play, drinks his own weight in alcohol and smokes way too many cigaretes. When it is wartime, Gabriel is a ruthless warrior, running campaigns in the name of God and commanding the Seraphim, the choir of warrior angels that he's the Commander of. He is the agressor where Michael is the protector and as such, Michael gives Gabriel a great deal of freedom in mapping out campaigns because of Gabriel's talent for military strategy and ability to adapt to the world as humanity and the universe evolves. I haven't drawn on one particular tradition for Gabriel, I've taken elements of his background and mythology from the Apocrypha, the King James Version of the Bible, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Torah and the Koran. I've also looked at a few white magic practitioners, such as Doreen Virtue, who has written extensively on the subject of Archangels. Therefore, in my Archangel choir, there are ten Archangels rather than seven as mythology can't seem to agree on all of them. The main three - Michael, Gabriel and Raphael - are always present but there's a lot of contradiction about who the rest of the Archangels are. Gabriel's wings are also not, in fact, white. I personally find the white wings attributed to angels to be somewhat twee. Because he's a warrior, Gabriel's wings are black and grey, reminiscent of a vulture. Michael's are more tawny coloured, like an owl's. All the Archangels have different coloured wings. It's one of my personal little bugbears.

Blaise.
Blaise is a peasant from France in a dystopian future after the world has gone through an apocalyptic event that has set science back to the medieval period. Basically lots of farming and hunting, small towns and villages, and a crude feudal system with knights, dukes, lords, kings and princes. Religion isn't a big deal in this dystopian future, but there is a semblance of it within the over-ruling Order of Shadows which exists on the sole principle of preserving knowledge and history. Blaise is a scholar with a love of learning and enters the Order as an acolyte with a thirst for knowledge for it's own sake. Through the course of the story, Blaise grows from a naive peasant into an intelligent, compassionate and reluctant soldier. Writing him is fun because the almost innocent joy he has when he learns something new is borderline childlike, his thirst for knowledge is almost pure, he has no desire to use his knowledge for personal gain or power or anything, he simply loves learning. He can be socially awkward and gauche but his heart is always in the right place and he tries the best he can to do the right thing for everyone, not just for himself. Blaise is a very loyal friend and companion. His sense of humour is dry and sarcastic.

Writing Meme: Day Seventeen.

Day Seventeen: Favorite protagonist and why!

Hm. I have a few, actually.

Gabriel.
Archangel Gabriel, the way I write him after exhaustive research and reading more scripture than I ever thought I would, is, in short, a brat. He gets along with his older brother Michael the best out of all his siblings and he and Michael have a very strong brotherly bond, they're best friends as well as brothers. Gabriel enjoys his vices - cigarettes, alcohol, sex, swearing - and even though he doesn't need food or drink to live, he enjoys indulging his culinary appetites. He's a soldier, a warrior, the General of God, second in command to Archangel Michael, and his carefree joie de vie can drop away in a heartbeat when he takes up his sword and goes to do battle. I like writing him because his turns of phrase are quirky and interesting, dialogue for Gabriel has always been a challenge because of his accent. I've decided that his vessel - as the angels in my writing take a human vessel in order to work on Earth without being detected as unusual - is from working class Britain, northern Londoner to be exact. His vessel was also a SAS General before Gabriel got permission to use his body for his own needs. The SAS General was dying of cancer and on his death bed, he gave Gabriel consent to use his body.

When it's not wartime, Gabriel plays pranks on his brother, loafs around bars and pubs, goes out to see bands play, drinks his own weight in alcohol and smokes way too many cigaretes. When it is wartime, Gabriel is a ruthless warrior, running campaigns in the name of God and commanding the Seraphim, the choir of warrior angels that he's the Commander of. He is the agressor where Michael is the protector and as such, Michael gives Gabriel a great deal of freedom in mapping out campaigns because of Gabriel's talent for military strategy and ability to adapt to the world as humanity and the universe evolves. I haven't drawn on one particular tradition for Gabriel, I've taken elements of his background and mythology from the Apocrypha, the King James Version of the Bible, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Torah and the Koran. I've also looked at a few white magic practitioners, such as Doreen Virtue, who has written extensively on the subject of Archangels. Therefore, in my Archangel choir, there are ten Archangels rather than seven as mythology can't seem to agree on all of them. The main three - Michael, Gabriel and Raphael - are always present but there's a lot of contradiction about who the rest of the Archangels are. Gabriel's wings are also not, in fact, white. I personally find the white wings attributed to angels to be somewhat twee. Because he's a warrior, Gabriel's wings are black and grey, reminiscent of a vulture. Michael's are more tawny coloured, like an owl's. All the Archangels have different coloured wings. It's one of my personal little bugbears.

Blaise.
Blaise is a peasant from France in a dystopian future after the world has gone through an apocalyptic event that has set science back to the medieval period. Basically lots of farming and hunting, small towns and villages, and a crude feudal system with knights, dukes, lords, kings and princes. Religion isn't a big deal in this dystopian future, but there is a semblance of it within the over-ruling Order of Shadows which exists on the sole principle of preserving knowledge and history. Blaise is a scholar with a love of learning and enters the Order as an acolyte with a thirst for knowledge for it's own sake. Through the course of the story, Blaise grows from a naive peasant into an intelligent, compassionate and reluctant soldier. Writing him is fun because the almost innocent joy he has when he learns something new is borderline childlike, his thirst for knowledge is almost pure, he has no desire to use his knowledge for personal gain or power or anything, he simply loves learning. He can be socially awkward and gauche but his heart is always in the right place and he tries the best he can to do the right thing for everyone, not just for himself. Blaise is a very loyal friend and companion. His sense of humour is dry and sarcastic.