I was having a thought in the bathtub about spirituality among my characters. I obviously haven't worked out the beliefs of everybody or even anybody on a really complicated level, but I do have a few of them worked out. I feel like going over it. lol (My journal!)

Let's see, I guess I'll go by story.

I'll start with He's There, because that's what I was thinking about first.

Lily
Lily's what I like to call a passive theist. She's my self-insert and that's what I used to be when I was her age. It basically just means that she casually acknowledges the existence of a God, maybe after a dwindling belief that used to be stronger. In the future, maybe taking longer than it did me, I can see her turning into a weak atheist, but never to the extreme. God's one of those things that is hard to let go of when it's so ingrained in the culture - it's an easy thing to fall back on and joke about, etc. But yeah. She's the girl that prays when she's really really desperate, but otherwise...

Mariam
I really see her as an atheist, which is funny because of her family. She's half Iranian so she has Muslim family members, but her mom is white and Christian. But all things point in another direction for Mariam - she's extremely practical and she's great at calling bullshit. No offense to anyone reading this, I'm just being honest. People like her, if they ever are more like Lily, you know they might eventually "switch to the dark side" through time. Also, and this is just a side thing, Mariam's going to be a science major. She'll have lots of opportunity to switch to the "dark side".

"Erik"
I think he's purely agnostic. I mean if you haven't noticed, he seems to have his own little gospel to preach about life. Any notion of religion just isn't relevant to his life at this point or any time soon. Good for him. He is interesting on his own.

Paulina
Pagan~! I really don't know much about her beliefs - I never constructed them. I think she's more interested in Wicca, though, the pagan thing is just associated. She's a lot more drawn to feminine representations of divinity - for her, they give her strength. Why is she pagan at all? Honestly, I just felt it since day one. Back when Lily met her, I thought nothing of giving her a pentagram because I saw her as a lot more in the "alternative" lifestyle than the goth. And it makes her interesting - it makes Lily very curious what she thinks.

Uhm... okay, Crystal Palace/2/3/4

Akira
Akira seems to firmly believe in the Judeo-Christian God, but he does not belong to any particular religion. He doesn't like organization of spiritual thought, or just plainly having to be social or go to church. He'd be that guy taking a nap in a pew. He really needed "God" most of his life, though, considering how lonesome and total shit his life was before he got to move out of the Shiver Region. Life just never got that better. He needs an imaginary friend - he needs someone to pray to - someone to blame for his dead-end job and his daughter and his failed marriage. It's too late to change his mind, I'm sure.

Cosmo
I see Cosmo as more of an atheist. I don't know, when I look in his eyes, I don't find someone who thinks of an afterlife. That said, I think he has some funky traditional morals that he will probably be broken out of when Kate comes along. He's one for marriage, that's for sure. He's probably vanilla in the bed (for a while, anyway). I don't know, lol. Cosmo's sort of an interesting guy - he behaves probably like a "good" Christian man but is not spiritual whatsoever. That might have to do with age and experience, though.

Crystallina
Crystallina's an adamant atheist. (Got that from Penn lately.) It's probably a stage - I don't trust that all her life she will feel that way and truthfully I think rather than having to do with her smarts, she's an atheist for the wrong reasons. She feels this way mostly just to be rebellious and stomp over other people's unexplainable beliefs. She's also in a stage where she'd just never submit. To her, she's at the top of everything.

Tilly & Jo?

Tilly
She operates like Akira, but with less disdain for church. She needs to feel looked over, she thinks things happen for a reason, and that karma is very real. Her views are a little too bright and sunny for me, though. She's young, so of course her idea of a God would be that he's absolutely great. Luckily, Tilly is not one to go around talking about it - it's more of a personal thing and she's had the experience to realize people think differently and should be able to. She's also influenced by Jo's beliefs, which I'll get to right now:

Jo
No opposition to theism or anything, he's just not interested. Probably an agnostic, but that does not stop him from having an interest in Asian religions. Jo grew up in Hawaii, so he's had a taste of the religions of that land as well as Buddhism, maybe a bit of Shinto, and Taoism. I think he's still in the process of learning, but he reminds me a lot of a Taoist - very go with the flow, just as he is a surfer. XD He accepts that there is a spectrum of things that could happen to him, a spectrum of things he could feel, but they're all natural and all right. You must do things for the sake of things, not because they will lead you somewhere. It's probably why he and Tilly have this lifestyle - they need Jo to make it happen, and Jo is smart and willing to make do with anything. He loves it, really. He'll probably develop into more of a Buddhist as well.

Gina
I see Gina as typically Christian, but not obnoxious. She's the kind always making exceptions in the Bible like "being gay is actually fine", because frankly, if she were fully Christian, that'd just be too mean and judgmental for her. I think Jo will introduce her to something new, though.

Wooden Light? I only have one to really go over.

Dorian
He's Catholic! Of all my characters, I think he feels the strongest religiously, mostly because he was raised in an extremely religious family. There was no room for arguments, and he didn't have time to think any differently. He's been dealing with a very fragile reality since as far back as he can remember, and I think the ideas in Catholicism actually feed to his delusions as a schizophrenic. They make him very sure that there is evil in the world. In fact, since I put this story on hiatus, I've had some new ideas come up that I think have a lot of power. He doesn't appear to live like a Christian, but I've made up a quote for him which reads: "Schizophrenia is when God leaves you behind." He feels he is in the world as if the devil has already taken him, fueled in some way by his mothers comments that her child was damned. And who wouldn't feel that way if you saw through his eyes? I feel very bad for him. Rather than bringing him any type of comfort, his idea of spiritual/metaphysical reality is that it is picking its moment to suck him into complete darkness.

I think that's all the important characters to whom I've given spirituality. Neat to talk about it, though.

I'm trying to remember all of the songs that I assigned as "themes" for characters. I-I don't know why I suddenly had the interest to do this, I guess I just wanted to keep track. It was brought about last night when I was listing to I'm With You thinking "has it applied to any chapter more than 38!?!" and that type of relevance is just rather inspiring, since music brings out a lot of feelings in you. I kind of need it sometimes to train my brain into thinking like the character. It can bring me up or take me down. I have to feel sure that it does to me what the character would.

Some songs relate me to them a lot (I'm With You), others take me to a funky place (Different People), others take away some of my energy and make me a little pensive. (Dark Blue) Others remind me of the characters' voices, so I listen going "Mmm..." (Here In My Room, Strange & Beautiful)

I did these in order of my Old-to-Recent list on my website. You can tell how some of my music tastes shifted since I was 14. XD

Jill
Zombie - The Cranberries

Kione
Imaginary - Evanescence

Casper
Aerials - System of a Down

My "version" of Mr. Crocker
Superman - 3 Doors Down

Michelle
Michelle - The Beatles (howoriginal,rite?)

Cosmo
Dark Blue - No Doubt
Too Late - No Doubt
(they're sorta connected in Dark Blue, which has a pause and an orchestral version of Too Late that I grew attached to!)

Lady Bow
Haunted - Evanescence

Dorian
Here In My Room - Incubus

Ani
Marionette - Megumi Hayashibara

Emma
Emma's Song - Cenn (Beautiful piano piece. I have NO idea who actually wrote it. Unlisted file that has survived the years.)

Fritz Huhnmorder
Go Monkey Go - Devo

Tilly AND Jo
Different People - No Doubt

The Phantom
Strange & Beautiful - Aqualung

Lily
I'm With You - Avril Lavigne


Not an adequate list by any means! A lot of characters still NEED songs! I'd really like to have ones for Akira, Mariam, individual ones for Tilly and Jo, Crystallina... I should ask Kate. She put a number of new things in my HT soundtrack just by flicking through her playlist.

*excited* I love the end result of music-hunting.

Circumstances have really turned me away from being creative in any way lately, but I found myself re-reading my revised chapter one of Tilly & Jo, again, and I've known every single time that it will be a hooker.

I forbid myself to start it until He's There is finished and edited, but even if I could now, what has always stood in the way has been that Gina doesn't have a personality and there isn't a strong plot.

A couple days ago, though, some ideas were brewing about how to fix those problems.

Gina's problem in the chapters I've written is that she's so terribly passive. She says things please or surprise her, which isn't always bad, but she doesn't take any initiative as a main character. It's a big mistake to expect your secondary characters to steer the ship. So I've decided that before any of this starts, I owe it to myself, AND to Tilly and Jo, to have a person narrating this book with a personality as strong as theirs.

How would one do that, though? And also, how could it be complimentary of theirs, making the interactions really pack a punch, and the story a true transformation archetype?

The answer to me came in the word "complimentary", and also in my comparison to them as an alice, a hatter, and a hare. (COMPLETELY unrelated to Adventures in Wonderland type ideas. I think this came beforehand.)

I wrote in the revised beginning (which may be taken out for later because of a conflicting idea) that Gina related herself to an Alice that was very good at following her advice, and I thought I would run with that idea that she is much like the opposite of Tilly & Jo.

* While they are free and disorganized and very flexible, Gina requires a little too much structure and has trouble adjusting to changes. I didn't want this to be something to do with stress from her family - I wanted it to be something even her family observed, as some entertainment purposes even, as self-strictness.

* While they treat every place like home and are not the neatest folks (although Tilly's a little better than Jo), Gina is too conscious about her behavior outside home, inhibited, perhaps a bit formal, and going along with having trouble with change, she relies on order, physically and socially.

* While they wear like the same clothes every day and eat off each other's plates, Gina, I think, would make a funny germaphobe. The kind that has sanitary wipes in her bag and showers/changes a little too often.

* While they have very little besides their clothes and what Jo can fit in his pockets, Gina's sorta loaded. Not loaded like her parents are filthy rich, but her Californian family is doing fine financially to put it simply, and she can be hesitant to let go of things, even if she doesn't need them anymore.

* While Tilly & Jo both have individual passions and talents (Tilly: art, dancing, history) (Jo: marine biology, music, sports), they have to put some of them on the back-burner so they can keep their heads above water, and neither know when they will be ready to properly return to society to pursue these things. Neither care about achieving outstanding heights, gaining recognition, or making money. Gina on the other hand has a very self-propelled drive. She takes her strengths seriously and aims to do something with them. She plans to retain a high GPA in high school (nevermind that freshman and sophomore year hardly count at all in the long run) and get into a good school, with either an academic or sports-related scholarship. Originally she played soccer, but I may be changing that. I don't know what her planned major is or most interested subjects, but I was thinking that she may have interests surprisingly similar to Jo's and it can aid in their friendship, since she has a harder time relating to him.

~ ~ ~

Yeah, I know she sounds like a different person, but it needed to happen because she really wasn't cutting it before. She provided no amount of excitement or personal force. This won't stop her from being friendly or taking risks, but it's contrast - it makes it a challenge on both sides.

Equally, it makes the transformation everybody's. She can be taught and they can be taught to adjust things about their lifestyles. Everyone can find a situation where they are weakest, most intimidated, and their eyes are most opened.

I guess in the alice - hatter - hare sense, Alice is taught that it's okay to visit Wonderland regularly, and the Hatter and Hare are taught that there is more to life than just sitting at the table drinking tea and being silly (ignoring the part about how Time hates them)...

And while I've created another female protagonist that I can relate to, I don't see her as me, even though she has small parts of me. I wanted to make sure she didn't turn out like Lily, and in this prospect she isn't. Lily might say her organization and non-slacking is a mite annoying. In some respects, Lily is actually closer to Tilly at heart because neither want to let go of that freedom to be their crazy self, with their partner in crime (although luckily for Tilly, Jo is 100% trustworthy? lol)

~ ~ ~

I'm still a REALLY long way from having this figured out, but step one is developing the three characters to the brim. Past favorite colors and foods and activities. I want to know where they've been in life, what scares them and hurts them the most, how their experiences have reflected their habits and attitudes. In a way, I never even got that far with He's There's characters, perhaps because I thought I knew them all so well just by personality. Tilly & Jo, being a transformation story though, relies heavily on having such handles on characters, though.

I still intend for it to be 150-200pgs in length. There will be less intensely personal comments and details, there may be times when days are just briefed over - unlike He's There, it's not a chronology where the nitty-gritty details make it what it is.

Of course, I say this now but it's hard to predict. I love exploring small things, so sometimes I have more length than necessary. At the least, He's There takes place in the span of... 8 months. Tilly & Jo is only 3. So I guess even if I wrote it with as much detail as HT, it could turn up half as long, which IS like 200pgs.

Well, I've talked a lot now. I'm just keeping this on record for when T&J is in "pre-production". I look forward to that day.

Until then, I'd better finish what I've already got. :D

P.S. I wonder if some of my inspiration for Gina's lifestyle comes/will come from glancesherlock? Tcheheh.