It Came From Outer Space…

I’m a little worried about appropriately writing a certain character in ‘Too Deep’ who is more than a little nuts. I find the irony that in the future of a story with a multiple in it there would be a character who is schizophrenic, given the few get so often confused for each other when they’re as different as face moisturizer and washing up liquid (at least in my humble opinion).

However here is where I worry…I have an impression of who Rachel, the schizophrenic, would act, but then I am not schizophrenic and I don’t know anyone who actually is, at least personally. I have met someone who loudly claimed to be so, but they may have just been saying things to get attention. Admittedly they had some problems, but not necessarily that one specifically.

I’ve seen schizophrenics portrayed in the media, in TV shows and films, but given that most of the time those places portray a multiple it’s highly inaccurate. I do not wish to trust a TV show to give me the ‘back up’ to verify my own portrayal of something.

At this point I figure that I will just write her the way I feel she should be, her craziness is going to be amplified because a lot of it will be being told from the perspective of Sam who is more focussed on the fact that Rachel freaks him out and is a junkie (at least when he meets her) which gives him a freak on a higher level due to his family’s history with drugs. At the same time other times her craziness is portrayed will be from her friend Nick’s retelling and he will downplay it given he likes her and feels bad about the whole situation, so there will be two varied extremes and her actual “craziness” would be somewhere in the middle. Yes, there will be bad times, but at the same time she’s in an unmedicated situation as she and Nick were on the run and he wasn’t aware that she had schizophrenia so didn’t know she needed medication. Her assistant who had been making sure she took the dose each day had been arrested as a spy. One of those unfortunate things.

I wonder how many other people write about characters that have some sort of mental disorder or situation that they can’t relate to first hand. Consulting the DSM-IV can only give you a clinical comparison disorders, I imagine, manifest so much more differently from person to person. Just talking to others with multiplicity I see a widely varied manifestation than what I experience.

Once again the plot of the game has spurred insight into the story that I’m writing; in running the first session yesterday I had to go a lot further into the R&D department on the moon, working out who had come up with a genetic plague, assistants, heads of departments and the various different areas and their functions as well as a good chunk of the internal dynamics.

It also gave me opportunity to sort out more of the way that the colonies run in relation to each other; and more of what goes into certain things that are manufactured there clandestinely, like “juice”; which is a potent meth-like drug which doesn’t smell like cat piss when it’s cooking but is still pretty flammable. I’ve decided it smells like a combination of acne gel, rotten oranges and burning. I don’t know if cat piss would be better than that…but at least it’s not quite as deadly to be around the manufacturing process as it is to be near a meth lab.

It seems the first session of the game went well. I was a little worried, but then I always am when I’m doing something like this. There’s something about opening up your creative structure and letting others toy with it. I wonder if other authors feel the same when they run across fan-fiction.

Just a little something I was inspired about given I’ve been drawing up plans for the biosphere and the Lunar colony.

There were subtle and also dramatic differences between the biosphere they had stayed in during training and the one here on Mars. Aside from the fact that the Martian sphere had to be a lot more finished before they saw it than the terrestrial one had given they couldn’t just pop outside in the frigid Martian atmosphere, there were many different things about the area she was now in.
They had been brought down to the Martian surface by shuttle and then had to carefully walk a few meters from the space shuttle bay doors to the airlock, passing as they did several domes with different environments in them. Kelsey couldn’t wait to see the rainforest dome first hand.
The airlock led to the central dome where the dorms and control center were. After they shed their space suits and put them in the airlock’s storage lockers they made there way into the dome. A blast of air which felt warm compared to the outside hit them once they stepped onto the soft grass. As she looked around there was the familiar site of a pond with trees around, and benches and tables dotted here and there to make a communal meal area; but then off in a shady little glade there were treadmills and weight benches and a stair climber device, and near there a flower bed was being dug. She could see the doorways leading to different domes, and as one of them opened and shut to let an employee in and out she heard a faint bleeting.
She felt her heart lift. She was home.

What? I hear you say; but yes. As some of you may know I’m a tarot reader by trade and we’re currently offering a Valentine’s Special over at my tarot site, which yes, used to be housed here.

Given things are a little slow with that right now I decided to do a relationship reading for Sam & Brad the two central characters of the “Too Deep” story which you may have heard me rambling about here and there. You can see the reading here: Demo: Relationship spread. Though I’m going to quote a lot of the written explanation here and explain and analyze it.

The first portion here speaks of healing. This is facing up to facts. In this case that there are wounds from the past that have not been allowed to heal, as well as habits that should have been overcome. You are not weak. You have the strength to face these things. It can also show recovering from illness or accident. Whether it is any or all of these, Judgment shows that you have the strength to face that the past is the past and can be laid to rest. There is a transformation going on a positive one.
The Hermit shows a time of introspection is needed to get this done, a time away from everything and almost everyone. There may be one or two significant people called on to help with this, those who can give you the space you need and the gentle encouragement to work through all these things, but it’s best to be away from the hustle and bustle of normal life and all the craziness that it has entailed in the past, so that you can properly ruminate and work through all the niggling and painful things that you need to.

That portion relates to Sam, and is a bit of ‘duh’ as that’s basically what the story is about, him recuperating, and facing up to the things which happened to him so that not only can he process things and finally heal, but also stick to his health-needed plan to quit drinking, but prove his fidelity to Brad by letting him in.

There are a few things causing conflict here, I believe the Queen actually represents your partner, given the King is already drawn as his signifier. I say this because the court cards are more likely to be people and because of the Ten modifying. This person is successful in business endeavors, and has the eye of an artist. They give their all for jobs and people that they believe in, and strive to ensure everyone and everything they put their faith into will succeed. They’re very practical and down to earth, and they wish to help but in this instance cannot, because of the Ten. The Ten singularly being at the peak of housing and work which can be both good and bad, because you’ve reached the top and get your rewards but you have all the responsibility that brings and have to carry it.
So in this case it is forcing oneself to do all these things and carry all these things by yourself when there is a willing hand to take some of the burden. I can do this. I should be able to do this. I don’t need help. I’ve done this by myself for so long I’m used to it. They’re unwilling or unable to recognize that they have help, willing help, and they no longer have to carry all these things alone. The problem then comes that they run out of energy and get crushed by everything and then are unable to do anything at all. Give over some of your burdens. Trust in those around you to be able to not only understand, but accept.

This points to things that are in the ‘background’ of the story and come to light slowly throughout the course of it. Brad and Sam met a few years after the war. Sam was doing a ton of different things trying to keep busy and essentially running himself into an early grave. Part of Brad’s major issue with this is the fact that not only would Sam never talk about all the things going on, giving him the brush off and just trying to get through everything, but that he was essentially killing himself on several levels, ignoring his health in particular not only refusing treatment for illnesses, but smoking and drinking.

Now, the Priest, in the Manga Tarot is the equivalent of the High Priestess in other decks. They hold all these secrets within, and carries the ability to reveal these things so that decisions can be made. You are going to learn a lot of things, some of them very odd and potentially disturbing, but they will benefit all around even though they may stir up the dead.

That’s one of those ‘duh’ factors again. The point of the story is the revelation of all these ’secret’ things. Sam’s childhood, his acts during the war as essentially a terrorist or resistance fighter (depending on which side you’re on).

Here we have a struggle. You have been battling a lot lately. There have been a lot of challenging things which have gone on, and you feel as though you’re at war, but you’re not entirely sure what you’re at war with. You’ve been shaken up, and are off-kilter, you have no idea how to fix these things, but you want to, and you should be able to. The cards are in your favor on this, so do not give up. This is also a card of struggling, you’ve been juggling a few things lately, money has been involved to a certain degree. This is more balancing of things, you’ve been having to balance perhaps two jobs, or career and home life and it’s been getting to you, but relief is at hand and things will pay off soon, and there will be less stress.

Yay, Brad, you win! The blockhead is coming to his senses and going to talk to you, and actually start taking care of himself. Brad has been balancing also, he’s finishing up school, doing an internship and worrying about Sam. He spent a few months completely at a loss because Sam up and left, figuring that he would die and not wanting to put Brad through that, and then when one of Sam’s “co-workers” get in touch, for a while he’s acting essentially as Sam’s caretaker on top of everything else.

Unlike the Queen from Sam’s reading this Princess is a situation and not a person, they are an indicator of good fortune, and change for the better, a turn around in ill-health that will bring great relief. They are paired with the XXI World which means this is a very Good Thing to have happen, and also that there is a completion of a long journey and great rewards coming for hanging in and soldiering through. The World being the last card of the Major Arcana is a very positive card. It is the card of perfection and happiness. It’s a successful conclusion and being able to reap the rewards of all the seeds which have been sown. Investments pay off. Relationships move to the next level. You can finally relax. This comes up when you’re reaching the end of a portion of your life, if you’ve been studying for a degree, it indicates passing and going on to the next level, it could also be marriage after a long engagement, or even both. It can also indicate travel, trips and being able to teach others.

There are several ways that could be accurate. Sam’s health is certainly much improved by the time the story starts. He’s still got some issues going on, given he has ravaged himself in several ways; but things do seem to be coming back together. It’s hard for Brad to process or relate to a lot of things Sam went through given they grew up in very different environments, and there was a lot of hurt and conflict but they’re actually able to work through those things while Sam explains himself, especially given that hearing about Sam’s upbringing shows Brad why Sam is so afraid to be close to people.

The Four here is a bit of a warning though. You’re getting all these rewards and all these good things, and there’s a want now to hold on tight to everything and not share with others, to keep what you have earned and save it for fear that it will disappear again, but this is unjustified, you will do much better if you take what you have and learn from it, and let others know so that they will not commit similar mistakes so that everyone can learn these lessons and take them to heart. What you give out you get back at least three-fold if not more.

This part is the only part that confuses me as both reader and story writer. I’m leaning towards the fact that it’s saying that Brad should not smother Sam after hearing what he went through and seeing what he’s gone through health-wise. That Sam does not need protecting in that sense. Alternately I wonder if it’s suggesting that they should use Sam’s recollections to write his memoir, in the book, and publish it to share with the people of their Earth and the colonies what happened.

The Ten is a great card to have here. This relationship WORKS, is what it’s saying. You can have a great time together. There is love here, there is happiness here and friendship. All the semi-cheesy cookie cutter “Hallmark” moments can be here, but without the cheese. It’s there, the issue appears to be trusting that it is in fact there, it’s hard for one or both of you to accept or believe in what is before them; which brings us to what doesn’t work; the Ace of Swords, which is potential. This is not to say potential is a bad thing, this is more be careful. You’re feeling better, sharper and you want to get out there and do things, however you mustn’t push too fast, you may be getting better but health is still an issue, if you push yourself to do things the way you have in the past you’ll be back in the soup again and worse than ever. Take things slowly. You have time.

They do click very well, but the Sword actions are something that Sam did. He had to go and work with their Earth’s equivalent of the FBI to identify some people, got sick while doing that, was in hospital, got better, then went right back to doing a bajillion things, started to get sick again, and ran away. These sort of patterns are B-A-D bad.

The potential here is an interesting combination of cards, the Prince is a card indicating one or two who love deeply and passionately once they allow themselves to do so. However if this card were a character they would be Romeo, so there is a bit of caution to be allowed with this deep romance, a worry about going too far, loving too much, which could be a downfall. The five, however, is a card of loss. I don’t think this is a financial loss despite it being pentacles, most other cards have pointed to health issues, so this is probably another warning on that regard. You may have lost but you have to try and focus on the fact that you still have a lot of good things, and while it may seem like there is no end to all of these troubles, things will get better especially if you focus on each other and the connections there and do not spurn the aid of those who are there for you.

The Prince reminds me a bit of Sam. He professes to not care about romance, and has been frankly a slut in the past, however he was always secretly wanting a relationship and the romance of it all, except he would crush on straight men quite a bit and mope about that and drink more.
He has lost quite a bit as far as health goes, including his sight, as becomes apparent in chapter two of the story, and a good portion of his liver, and function of his lungs. However, he is learning to celebrate the fact that he is alive and does have people who care about him despite his stupid mistakes. Brad is also learning to accept that Sam does care also, as one of his fears was that he was doing all this and had actually been being used this whole time.

So there’s that, my follow-up on the reading. I very much liked doing this, it’s an interesting and fun way to continue character studies.

I find it helpful some times to just do random blurbs even if they’re not related to what I’m working on. I liken it to running salt and ice through a filter, it gives your brain a cleanse and a rinse and enables you to focus more clearly on the task at hand. In my case the task at hand is working on “Too Deep” but I’ve come to a rather sticky area of the plot which is very emotional, where the main character is recounting coming across a friend of his, a girl he grew up on the streets with, being attacked by boys in his school and comes to her aid.

So, to cleanse my brain I’m going to write a bit of another story instead and then go back to “Too Deep” ready to slog through the muck and come out the other side. So, this is actually just a random aside with a character I have in another story I haven’t mentioned who is a pilot, who was in an accident, or so she’s being told.

The holo droned and flickered and flickered and woke her up. Holos weren’t supposed to flicker or break up that was part of the point, that and the crisp clear visitation of the events right to you as though you were involved. This was a definite hiccup. The daily deals being offered to contestants on a game show were discorporating the news broadcast that had come on.
She reached for the picture, stumbled and almost fell out of bed. That was when she remembered where she was. This wasn’t her room. Her left hand was completely bandaged which explained why it didn’t move the way she had expected either, as she’d reached for the newscaster. The bed didn’t go the way she expected. There were wheels and beeps and a strange stickiness against her forehead. She reached up with her right hand, the fingers were stiff, and two of them were splinted, but at least she had some motion. A monitoring beacon, well that made sense.
Things were out of place though and not just the rooms’ inability to look like her own room because it wasn’t her own room. The holo shouldn’t flicker, and even if it did she should be able to see why it was, and fix it. Machines had been in her blood before oxygen. Now there was an absence, she felt as though her limbs were lead, things were wrong…
The door opened and a woman in a white uniform walked in. Spying her charge reaching out in quiet desperation towards the hologram she rushed over, “Oh, honey,” she said, “if you need to change it the comm button is right here,” she murmured, “how are you feeling?” she put a hand on her charge’s forehead, despite the fact that all the information was being transmitted to the padd she had at her hip.
“Dry,” she managed, realizing that speech was causing her throat to crack, “it’s wrong…”
The nurse went to the door and picked up a bottle of liquid and brought it in, “Are you one of the cult of Sanqui…I’m sorry I can’t pronounce it, but you know what I mean, right?”
“Yes and no,” she said, then frowned, “I mean, I’m not, but I get it.”
“While we’re at it, what would you like me to call you?” she said, and then realized she was still holding the water, and, “Sorry,” she started to hand it and then stopped, unscrewed the cap and opened it and then offered it.
“Denny’s fine,” she replied after draining half the bottle, and carefully setting it on the table, “I’m sorry though, um, which hospital am I at?”
“It’s Sword Coast,” the nurse replied, “and don’t worry P.D.F. made sure to bring in their own people so they’d fix you up appropriate to, you know,” she wiggled her fingers.
Denny frowned again, “Right,” she said, slowly, “Well, then I’d like to be talking to those people and very soon.”

It’s always interesting when you’re writing a character and suddenly realize they’re racist. Hello Nurse?

I decided just to do a little mini-blurb based on some of the planning I’ve been doing for “Too Deep”. It’s when he’s telling Brad about the time that he gets re-recruited, after a resistance member overhears him having an argument with a gang member, and then tracks him down in time to prevent him successfully committing suicide.

Brad let go of his hand, so that he could reach up and wipe his own eyes, “Sorry,” he murmured.
Sam gave a shrug, “Shit happens, I guess.”
Brad shook his head, “No, I mean…most of the people I grew up around they were the sort of shallow like your ex, Roy, where they would want to kill themselves if their family didn’t buy them the best best acne cleanser, so they had to go to school with blemishes, or they’d find some other vapid way to manipulate their parents…it’s not like I haven’t seen the scars before, and there has to be more than one time, based on those…” he hesitated reaching a hand out towards Sam’s sleeve, to roll it back and trace the lines, “Of course most of them would have the scars cosmetically removed after a certain time when it was no longer cool. Us poor Earthers with our terrible problems,” he laughed sarcastically.
Sam gave a slight smile, “It’s still kinda stupid,” he said, “here I was on the one hand wanting to help make things better, and then I did that, but I was completely lost. I knew the father had connections, but everything was so mysterious, I hadn’t had time to find anything he had written. I was terrified that my leaving the orphanage so quickly meant the idiot military police had found that information and torn apart the entire resistance. Not logical thought I know, but still…”

I’m having an issue deciding on tense. I had to go back through and edit the blurb a little because it started out past tense, shifted to present somewhere in there and then back to past. My issue with the tense is based on the fact that he’s telling the story of his past in his present, so I feel as though it should be in present tense, except for the flashbacks being in the past; but I don’t know if that will be too jarring.

I’m expanding my knowledge on the main characters for “Too Deep”. I know I still have “Sanctity” in the pipeline but the way my muses work I have to go with what I get, and what I’m getting for the past couple of days has been Sam and Brad.

One of the main differences is the environments they grew up in. Brad grew up on Earth with a stable, loving family and good prospects. The war didn’t touch him directly, but still he grew into a conscientious thinking individual who wants to rebuild and help make things right for the future.

Sam on the other hand grew up on the Lunar Colony with little to nothing, his parents were killed in a drug raid, his older brother looked after him in the slums for a few years until the government tried to wipe out the slums with a viral outbreak which killed the older brother and then he gets taken in to an orphanage, but works out of their as a courier up ’til and after the place that was leveled, when he got roped into working for the rebellion to get out of going to jail, and probably winding up dead.

After the war he meets up with Brad at college. While he had no formal education he was able to take courses and basically “clep out” of high school. I’m working on how to do that. Most of the world is centered around Eurasia the way I have it envisioned. So, they don’t have the same sort of high school equivalence tests that I’ve become used to in the states. Rather than try to do something I figured I would just research some others, I’ve found some help looking at
LSAT prep courses. The way it would work with Sam given he has an eidetic memory is that if he took and studied the preparatory courses he would be pretty much set to take the tests and get a good grade. So, the futuristic equivalent of Knewton would be something he would wind up very familiar with, and when I research their way I find they’re extremely thorough. They have a great program, some times research gives you strange gems. I can’t believe that they offer online classes to prep you for your test, syllbi, study guides, quizzes, practice and even text alerts.

That’s very different to the way it was for me where I was basically given a huge boring book and had to slog my way through. It makes me wonder by the time that Sam is doing this how many more advances there would be. There’ll probably be computer games to help him study and information beamed directly into the living room on a virtual program. I figure the Wii style of system would have been expounded upon, where computers will be very VR based.

I was getting input and information about another story I’ve had in the pipeline which is tentatively called “Too Deep” because when I first started planning it I would always associate the main character with a certain song by Sum 41: In Too Deep.

While Kore and I were cleaning up her room I was chatting with her about a dream I’d had the night before involving a couple of the characters and that talk about the dream wound up with my expounding upon the timeline of the main character’s life. He’s really alive in my head.

However I wasn’t sure if one of the things. Initially when I’d first started talking about Sam I’d thought he wound up with one of his cohorts. It seemed a little weird as the cohort wasn’t really interested in Sam that way I’d thought, and I’d felt that perhaps I contrived it just because I wanted him to be with the cohort. However the more I was talking about the dream the more I realized that his boyfriend Brad was a decent guy and it would be really a shame if they didn’t stay together because Sam being an idiot broke up with Brad when he thought that he was going to die. One of those stupid “it’ll hurt less if I die and we’re not together” sort of mindsets. I’m not sure if Sam would actually wind up with Brad, but one of the beauties of writing the story is that I can make him wind up with Brad. In fact I’ve decided the story will come from the perspective of him explaining his life to Brad as a condition of them coming back together as a couple, given one of the main issues in their relationship had been Sam not wanting to tell Brad about his past actions during the war because he was afraid of talking about that.

I was talking to a friend the other day about how thoroughly you have to plan out characters and settings. I was picking up a notebook of graph paper to map out layouts of houses and ships that are in a few of my stories and also in some games that I have going on, and we were talking also about the importance of knowing your characters inside and out, being able to picture them and know how they’ll react even if it’s not going to be mentioned in the story it’s often important to know certain motivations.

I was explaining in “Sanctity” that the character of Hajime is adopted, that’s a minor factor, she’s an Asian child with white parents. They couldn’t have children, but then add to that the extra layer that when she was twelve her Mom got pregnant and had a son, and then within two years had another daughter, and then had her tubes tied, that adds more depth. She’s a graphic artist, she’s marginally obsessed with the Japanese culture having spent so little time there and trying to understand more about her biological heritage. She’s also very determined when it comes to things and harbors various insidious feelings towards her family that she can’t help, because she finds herself fearing that she may be displaced especially as she’s going away to college and they’re there by themselves now that whole biological family and her the outsider. While those fears may be unfounded, I feel that her family, of course, love her as their own, because they’re not so shallow people, they’re still a part of her.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time deciding how the college area will look. I admit a lot of the idea of it came to me while I was at college myself and I’m bound to use that place as a basis for a lot of things, but there are other things to look at, are their copper sinks or stainless steel ones or are they porcelain? are the staircases wooden or stone? what kind of bricks are on the outside of the building? are the windows square or rounded? what do the gardens look like? is the entire campus isolated or is it integrated throughout the town it’s in? what is the town itself like? what sort of shops do the students have access to?

All these things are important to figure out because the college itself is as much a character in the story as the people are, and the way the town is set up affects very much the way certain parts of the action are going to pan out.

I’m getting somewhere. If I could just keep myself calm more often that would really help.

The air felt so clear and everything was so bright. She stepped through the room and her arms outstretched as they were couldn’t hope to reach the walls. She could feel more than see that there were thin wisps of curtains whispering in the breeze ahead of her as she walked towards the opening. It was not a window because it seemed to take up almost the whole wall, and she knew if she just stepped through she would be within the rest of the city, among the others.
Just one more step…
and another…
and soon there would be nothing just the freedom of…

She came down with a thud, it had something to do with falling off the bed. Her legs were tangled in Jonas’. She pulled herself free of his almost iron grip, clumsy with the dregs of her take. She scraped her knee on a bent soda can, stick with week-old contents as she did so.
She rubbed her eyes dry for a few moments trying to readjust. Her mouth tasted foul. Everywhere had been so warm, the walls sparkled, the huge windows, the curtains billowing, trying to caress her.
She stood slowly and lurched towards the bathroom, but stopped when she saw the figure in the mirror behind, yet in front of her. Her stomach curled in on itself and dropped towards her toes at the same time her hands clenched up as her nails dug back into her palms.
“Leave me alone! I’m not going!” she picked up something to hurl at the mirror—but it turned out to be a sock and didn’t have much strength behind it anyway.
“Oh, relax. I’m not here for you.”
She whirled around, almost falling over in her haste to look at Jonas. The slight discoloration of the skin. The stains on his clothes from shitting himself. The tightness of his arms and legs from convulsing into the next plane.
“No! No! No!” she screamed resisting the compulsion to drop back to the floor, “Haven’t you done enough?”
“Not nearly.”

I’ve pretty well gotten to the end of that section of Dane things, now I’m just trying to decide where the next few bits will go. If Dane’s piece is the best place to begin things or if I should start with the others, slot Dane in and then continue from the point where she meets with the others again. I’m trying to decide, also, if I should prologue with the events that happened to cause her to leave in the first place, or just show those in flashback throughout the story. Either way I need to write them out. Perhaps I should just keep writing what comes and sort out the order once they’re all out of me.