Jumping on the meme-wagon

[aadler]

 
It didn’t start with him, but I got this from bastardsnow:

Comment to this post with the name of a character that I have written in fic.

In my reply I will tell:

1. What initially prompted me to like the character enough to write about him/her.
2. One of his/her best traits.
3. One of his/her worst traits.
4. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character.
5. The story/chapter/paragraph/phrase where I feel that I best captured the character.
6. My plans (if any) to write the character in the near future.

Comments

[aadler]

You deliberately tossed me an easy one, didn’t you? Okay, here goes:

1. What initially prompted me to like the character enough to write about her:


I gave her an appearance in In Ev’ry Angle Greet (and thoroughly enjoyed working with her), but that was a thematic choice rather than any preference for the character. It operated as a debut for her; her starring role, obviously, was in First Do No Harm.

Why did I choose Harmony for that story? Well, she’s fun. Joss was famous for getting as much mileage out of his characters once they were dead as he did when they were alive, but Harmony was someone we’d been seeing for years (since the series premiere, as I recall), and she showed more personality as a vampire than she did as a human. At the same time, it seemed to be essentially the same personality: still the bubble-head stuck eternally in high-school mode, but with a bit of carefree killing tossed in for extra flavor. It just looked promising … and I’ll have to say she delivered the goods in spades.


2. One of her best traits:


As a person, her sunny optimism. As a character, how utterly oblivious she is: she’s not only clueless, she doesn’t have a clue that she’s clueless. Makes for many laughs.


3. One of her worst traits:


As a person, her self-centeredness. As a character, my biggest problem is that I can’t let myself write her too sympathetically; she’s cheerfully evil, matter-of-factly amoral, one of those routine hell-creatures that really should be killed. She’s just so much fun to watch.


4. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character:


Unexpectedly easy. I kept going back in and revising to keep her dialogue from showing too much intelligence, but I have to pay close attention to dialogue for everybody, and with Harmony I at least have a general feel for her voice.


5. The story/chapter/paragraph/phrase where I feel that I best captured the character:


Story: First Do No Harm. (Big “duh”.) Paragraph, the third-to-last paragraph of that same story.

She smiled at the memories of Cromwell. Two thousand bucks, and she’d finally made the good-guy thing work. Sort of. It was hard keeping track of all the little persnickety things a hero was supposed to do and not do, but she’d totally nailed the basics. She’d put a scare into Dustin (Katie might wonder why her boyfriend had gone lukewarm all of a sudden, but she’d recover and find some nice, reliable idiot); she’d cleared the way for Doc and Judy, who’d never have had a chance if not for her; she’d stopped a plague, slaughtered a warehouse full of demons and taken down two evil masterminds (such as they were), and all without killing anybody who didn’t have it coming to them. Really, why did people make such a big deal about the whole soul issue? All you had to have was a positive attitude.


6. My plans (if any) to write the character in the near future:


No plans currently. It could happen, but nothing in the works.