Worth 50,000: Day Seven - Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

[momebie]

It's not just onions that have layers, is it? I have them. You have them. And if we're lucky our characters have them. Over the weekend I got to spend some good, concentrated time with the project I'm trying to get a rough draft of by the end of the year. I've been thinking about most of these characters for three years. I've thought over their motivations and ticks and the way they wear their hair. And yet, in the heat of the moment, I discover more about them still. A character who I have always thought of as just being sort of passive came out of the box kicking and screaming. He was so alive that the scene ended up being five pages long, when most of the others have been two at the most with notes to go back and add to them, but this one made me feel like I'd finally gotten the thing underway. The novel is no longer holding out for a hero, it's taken matters into its own hands.

So tell me about the way your characters thrill you. The chills and pops and pows! Or better yet, tell me how our gentleman below thrills you. How many layers are his face paint hiding?



Write. Comment. Repeat.

Comments

I don't even know what this is, it just wouldn't stop happening.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I. Babel says ‘I love you’ because she’s
forgotten how to do anything else.
She doesn’t reach into the darkness anymore.
She expects him to reach for her on his own
terms. Even as she lies
open to him in the pale orange glow of her streetlights
and inhales, waiting to be the thing he needs.
He does little more than mark her.
The trail of his fingers leaves streaks across her face
that build his anonymity with the hopes that
one day she’ll rub the paint into her eyes
and by not seeing remember him only
as the boy in the doorway, eager to begin.
He knows that even if she does
the sound of his gloves will give his new position away.

II. He works easily within her, taking advantage of her
distraction and exploiting her constancy.
He says ‘I love you’ because his brain is skipping, trapped
by a villain down by the docks
while his tongue is stuck in the center groove, repeating
his past because he doesn’t know
how to walk away from it. On slow nights he leaves
his guns at home and paces her borders,
searching for a sign that they’ve slipped somehow and
might now include a little piece of unforeseen skin,
but they hold fast.

III. The maps with the well-worn pathways
of his night patrols all belong to salesmen.
They claim to be able to unmask him.
They will tell you where he’ll be for a price.
Because a city without a hero will stand silent.
All they want is to rest.

IIII. Preference and identity are the amenities of his
doubt. He could lose himself to her.
He thinks about it, because it would be easier
than reinventing himself every day. Every morning
he recreates the color of his mask. Should he match her
eyes or should he match her walls? Every new barrier erected
is a wider and darker memory than the last
until the red rimming his eyes coagulates.

V. Babel says ‘I love you more’
because he’s forgotten how to do anything but
respond to her provocation and she has a need
to retaliate in kind. When he scales her
she broadens her footholds to keep him safe and
it makes him take his own mortality for granted.
He’s so busy feeling benevolent for not leaving her
that he forgets she can roll up her sidewalks
and leave him instead. She hasn’t, so
there’s no precedent for worry, but she can.
She’d be darker, but she’d still be.

VI. Babel says ‘I love you’ because she knows
that a hero without a city is aimless. Even if she doesn’t know
what to do with him anymore
she’s afraid the echoing ricochet of his wild firing might kill him,
and a city without a hero is just a city.

[pocky_slash.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I don't even know, I've not had enough coffee for this.

I will wander off and think about it.

[pocky_slash.livejournal.com]

Okay, at this point, it's like a personal challenge to do these. Blame mcwonthelottery who was like, "Just write about baby mutants smearing jam on their faces."

***

The water is running when Erik opens the door to the apartment.

"Charles?" he calls out.

Don't even start.

Erik raises his eyebrows. It was obviously a long day at daycare.

"I didn't say anything," Erik calls inside, unwinding the scarf from his neck and leaving his briefcase by the door. He doesn't want to seem eager to see what's happened to Charles but. Well. Erik's had a long day, too, and while he understands that daycare antics can be frustrating to the daycare teacher, to Erik they're mostly just hilarious.

I heard that, Charles grouses. Don't come in here.

"I'm not going anywhere!" Erik lies, tip-toeing around the coffee table and down the hall.

"I hate you!" Charles shouts down the hall, but of course Erik is already there and turning around the corner and--

Erik does a very good job of not laughing for about five seconds.

"I really do hate you," Charles complains, with a pout to rival those of the children he spends all day with. The sink is running and there are several canisters of soap littering the sink, the back of the toilet, and the side of the tub. Erik can only assume that Charles is trying whatever he can to get the dark black circles around his eyes off of his skin.

"What..." Erik tries to ask between laughs. "What..."

"You're terrible!" Charles says, and pushes at Erik, who nearly falls over, he's so weak from laughter. "There was some sort of mistake," Charles says, folding his arms and glaring. "Jean, bless her, was asked by Moira to fetch some facepaint for storytime and she pulled the wrong thing from the craft drawer and Moira failed to double check before applying it to my eyes."

"What is it?" Erik asks, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. He reaches for Charles' cheek, brushing against the stain with his thumb.

"Permanent ink," Charles says miserably.

Erik swallows down another laugh. "Oh my," he says, but he saves the twenty three jokes that spring to mind when he sees how truly upset Charles seems to be. "Why don't I get the rubbing alcohol and we'll see what we can do?"

Charles' smile is worth it.

Plus, those jokes will be even funnier if spread out strategically over the next few days.

[darkmachines.livejournal.com]

She looked up at him from the bed.

"It's a waste of time, you know. Everyone knows what you look like underneath all that..."

He didn't bother to look at her. He knew exactly what she was doing, rolling on the bed and wrapping herself in the sheets with her toes delicately pointed as they stuck out, the tips painted perfect red, just like her lips. She always moved to some invisible rhythm, an unheard song.

He ignored it and painted himself.

The first layer was for him and him alone. It was light and see-through, the way he hoped his heart would feel by the end of the night. It was the way he hoped he felt every night. A feeling he had yet to feel, but he kept trying for. The next layer was for everyone else, a bit thicker, a bit more hard to penetrate. It was the way he had to be on the city streets. After that, each layer was for a specific person he had encountered - the woman who taught him what it was like to live with nothing to go home to, the man who showed him what it was like to come to a party and have nothing to offer, the child who believed in superheroes, still.

From the bed, she clicked her tongue.

"There's a mass murderer out there." She said.
"I know."
"I'm worried about you."
"You probably should be."
"I'm worried it is you."

"Like I said. You should be worried."

[gisforgreen.livejournal.com]

There was something soothing about baseball for Brian. Putting on his catcher’s gear piece by piece had transformed into a relaxing ritual for him. it didn’t matter if he was going into a saturday practice or a playoff game because his ritual was a constant and an equalizer that helped him transition from Brian the science geek into Brian the MVP catcher.

His favorite part of the routine was putting on eye black under each of his eyes. Watching his teammates do the same. Sure it was a necessity because of the sun beating down on them, but it was also something that tied them together as a team. Sitting around in any locker room in any state it was the one thing that remained constant for them.