- Zair as a Memory Keeper
- Deities are too much fun
- I found Cale!
For the record, I will always make links show up in a new window. I find it so annoying when links don’t do that.
Word count: 19,685
I am fascinated by memory. I believe places hold memories and that there is such a thing as collective memory. I am Jewish and I believe that the Holocaust is ingrained as a cultural burden, as a memory all people raised Jewish carry with them. I think we comprehend the memory of the Shoah (our word for the Holocaust) with far more pressure (physical pressure sometimes) than others can/do. I am also fascinated by mother-child relationships and how children can adopt the burdens of their parents and specifically the mothers’ burdens. In tES I have given Zair a gift. The magic in tES is very different…there are no spells and there are few forms of physical magic. Magic cannot heal, bring back the dead, and can rarely kill. Zair’s gift is that he can sense/absorb some of the memories of those around him. This is also a burden, a double edged sword for him. Not all memories are good, not all are bad, but they can affect his first impression of a person and they can affect his later impressions. Someone whom he considered very good, very honest, etc, has memories which eventually are ‘leaked’ to Zair that prove otherwise.
I find this very fascinating to write and I hope it comes off as fascinating to read!
I am writing a prologue. But I don’t think I’m going to use it. It’s got a different feel to it, perhaps more dark, comical, deities and gods and goddesses bickering over a game, a little more Pratchett/Gaiman, perhaps. Someone on AbsoluteWrite is beta reading it for me after I finish it tonight…my first beta torture? Hopefully it’ll go well and I won’t cry :p J/k.
And Cale with the accent on the e. I really need to figure out how to do that here. I’ve always known she’s an islander, dark skinned with her hair in braids/matted/dreds. She’s not traditionally beautiful. Zair doesn’t look at her and go “Wow. I’d do her” (for a lack of a more discrete way of putting this) even with what must be raging 16yr old boy hormones. But I just found two great things. 1. Pictures which were mysterious and fun and 2. an explanation for her tattoos!
Young Maori woma
n wearing a feather cloak
Young Maori woman wearing a feather cloak
Original albumen photograph, c 1900 (unmounted)
190 x 140 mm
Photographer: Arthur Iles (1870-1943), Rotorua
Titled in negative: Iles Photo Rotorua No. 58.
Good condition with creasing due to removal from an album page at some point (exaggerated by scan).
page at some point (exaggerated by
What a beautiful picture of this girl, don’t you agree? And the cloak is so interesting. So then I went a searching for Maori women…
straight from the website:
Mark of a Woman
The permanent blue stain on a Maori woman’s tattooed mouth symbolized female beauty among her people in New Zealand. The personal facial tattoo, or moko, communicated her lineage, social position, and marriage eligibility.
Photograph from Iles Photo/submitted by Chas J. Glidden, circa 1919
From 100 Best Vintage Photographs, 2004scan).
So, here, we have islander women, and there is a history of tattooing on islands to do exactly what I wanted the tattoo to do (denote clan and lineage). I suppose I first got this idea because I love RPing (roleplaying) and writing Sea Folk/Atha’an Miere from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (i roleplay at ageofglory.net) But the facial tattoos…I had tattoos spiralling on the sides of her face but perhaps now I will cover her face. A daughter of the gods, after all…
