Child of the moon

Jacob dashed into the kitchen, dragging mud across the floor from the front door. "Mom!" he shouted on his way in over and over. He had been playing outside nearly all day, and it had rained only the night before. As his mom turned to look at him, she saw the mud long before she saw him, and sighed in agony. "Mom!" he just kept yelling, his voice a mixture of ecstasy and nervous anticipation.

"Yes, Jacob?" she asked with a dull tone to her voice. It took every ounce of willpower that she had not to immediately start scolding him over the mud. She had tried to raise him better than this. It must have been her husband's fault. "What is it?"

"I was playing out in the woods and I found this girl and she's really weird and cool and she doesn't know who she is or where she came from and her clothes look really weird and I think she's hungry so I told her she should come home with me but then I wasn't sure if you would approve and you probably wouldn't be prepared for her so you wouldn't have enough food and so-"

His quick, incessant jabbering was finally cut off by his need to breath. He had been talking so fast that his mother was only able to catch every other word he said. She massaged her skull, trying to make sense of what she had just been told, but only spent a few moment's on the task before giving up on it. "Whatever it is, Jacob," she said, "just get it inside and get it cleaned up before dinner. And stop dragging mud through the house."

Jacob let out a whoop of happiness and ran back out of the house to get the girl that he had been talking about, and his mother turned back to the dinner she had been preparing with a sigh. That boy was going to be the death of her.

When she finished cooking, she made her way up to the bathroom, anticipating having to clean Jacob and get him dressed before dinner. He was only five, and was still struggling with fully understanding things and doing much other than playing and eating. She nearly screamed when she opened the door to the bathroom to find two children naked in the bathtub, attempting to scrub the mud off of one another, and one was a girl she had never seen before.

The girl looked at her, confused, a look of blank curiosity on her face. Her eyes were a pale magenta, so pale in fact that they nearly blended in with the whites of her eyes, and her hair was shoulder length and dark purple.

"Jacob!" his mother shrieked. She hardly noticed the way the girl flinched and scrunched up at the loud noise. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Who is this girl, and why is she naked with you?"

"Mom," Jacob whined. "I told you! I found her and she doesn't know much! And you told me to take what I found and clean me and it up, so that's what I'm doing!"

"Jacob, that is not what I meant and you-"

She was cut off as the girl screamed in pain at all of the noise, her hands pressed tightly against her ears. She was so small, but Jacob's mom felt like the scream itself had reached out to punch her in the gut. She crumpled to the ground, hands holding onto her stomach as the air rushed from her lungs. Jacob was knocked out of the bathtub by it, spinning into the wall where he was pinned.

The screaming stopped as abruptly as it had started. It took a while for Jacob's mom to compose herself enough to be able to sit up. And when she did, she found the girl still in the tub, though half the water had spilled to the floor, and passed out, her energy having been used up by whatever demon spell she had just cast.

Interesting characters

I'm not going to pretend that I know some kind of secret to writing interesting characters. If you've read just about anything I've written, you probably know better than to think that that could ever conceivably be true in the slightest. I have, however, on occasion made a character that people have been very interested in, and I wanted to talk about that.

The thing that intrigues me about it is that, without fail, the characters people find most interesting are the ones I never intend on using any longer. They are invariably one off characters that I want to leave mysterious, because knowing things about them is unnecessary. Their entire purpose is to be a person for the main character to interact with in a somewhat odd way, to give them something to think about and react to.

I wish I could say that that's information I could use to write more interesting characters, but what I get from it is that the less you know about a character, the more interesting they are. And there's probably some truth to that, and in theory you could use that information to your advantage, but there's one person you simply can't use it for: the protagonist.

The protagonist is the person that you follow throughout the story. That's what the word means. They're the main character. How are you going to follow that character and never say anything about them? How are you going to spend an extended period of time with them and never learn anything about them? They would stay mysterious, surely, but they would quickly become boring and robotic. They would have to never say anything, never do anything, never act in any way that might reveal something about their personality.

Then, of course, there's the secondary problem with having a mysterious character. People want to learn more about them. You call a character interesting because you want to know more about them. And when people want to know more about a character, you have two options: you can either oblige and reveal more about them, or you can ignore their requests.

The problem with the first choice is that, in revealing more about a character, you might ruin what made them interesting. Especially in situations where you didn't intend on using them anymore, as with my mysterious characters, trying to write more about them means that you are forcing yourself to write about them, rather than letting them write themselves. That makes the writing sound, fittingly, forced. Not only does whatever you say play a role on anything that happens to them in the future, but it also affects how people viewed what has already happened. By writing more for a character that wasn't supposed to be written about, you risk throwing away everything that they were.

However, by simply ignoring people's requests, you look as though you don't care about what your readers want, which is far from what you want to do. In fact, they might not realize it, but you might be intentionally doing it for the very reasons I stated above. You don't want to ruin the good you already have going.

It's a slippery slope in either direction. I have tried to concede to reader's requests and ruined what I had, and I have tried to ignore them and had interest in a story as a whole lost because of it. I have no idea how to properly approach the subject, nor how to balance it. However, having seen responses, it does make me want to play around with mystery more. I want to try and consciously make mysterious characters that will garner interest, rather than doing it accidentally.

Of course, that could end poorly. But it's worth a shot.

Sleeping

Matthew propped himself up on one elbow, making sure to move quietly so as not to wake his wife. She had fallen asleep some twenty minutes earlier, but Matthew had not been so lucky. However, when she was sleeping and he was not, there were some things that he could enjoy that he could not when she was awake.

He closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the soft, relaxed sounds of her breathing. She was an active person, and so spent much of her time breathing rough and hard from all the energy that she put out. Not that he didn't enjoy that, and especially at some times more than others, but there was just something nice about the slow and steady breaths of her sleeping. She was more relaxed then she ever was when she was awake, and that relaxed him as well.

He opened his eyes so that he could look over her, and watch the way her chest gently raised and lowered with each breath. When she slept, she had a softness too her that was not present at other times. She was strong minded and strong willed, and everything about her showed it, from the way she carried herself to the way she spoke. There was something about that that attracted him. But in her sleep, she looked innocent and docile. Such a drastic change from who she was in her waking hours, and it put a smile on his face.

He gently laid a hand on her skin and caressed it slowly. Somehow over the years, she had managed to keep her skin smooth, almost to a point where it felt like silk, and he loved it. She sighed happily in her sleep at his touch, and wiggled her way closer to him, which only made him smile even more. As he felt her skin, he slowly leaned down to kiss her forehead, which pulled forth another happy sigh and more wiggling.

He laid back down, one arm curled tightly around her waist, and buried his face in her hair. There was something entrancing about the way she smelled to him, and especially so in the case of her hair. It made him feel comforted and warm, like he was wrapped up in something that he could only accurately describe as 'home.'

A brief temptation passed through his mind to reach up and tickle the back of her neck. He knew she was highly ticklish there. It made her squeal and flail wildly and generally do everything she could to try and make him stop. He found it adorable. She did not agree. He decided against it, however, because as fun as it might be for a moment, he knew that he would quickly come to regret it. And it would probably make him take much longer to fall asleep.

Sleep was finally coming to him, though, with her smell overcoming him. He closed his eyes and felt her warmth against him. He felt the way her skin felt against his own. He felt her breathing push against him, and felt his own begin to match it.

As his vision faded and the world went with it, all that was on his mind was her.

Martial arts

I've mentioned before that I spent a lot of time in my life learning martial arts, and while I do not actively practice it at the moment, it still enthralls me. There are a number of different martial arts that I would love to learn, especially Iaido (which I'll get to in a moment), but unfortunately these aren't things that you can just look up a youtube tutorial for and figure it out. You might be able to get some of the ideas down, but unless you have someone watching over you who knows what they're doing, you're probably going to be making some mistakes that may seem minimal, but could ruin the entire point of what you're trying to do.

A good example of that is punching. That sounds like a really straightforward, basic thing to do, but there are a lot of ways you can mess that up. The most obvious example I can give is where you put your thumb. Most people who have never thrown a punch before will instinctively wrap their fingers around their thumb, holding it on the inside of their fist. If you throw a solid punch like this, you will break your thumb. Instead, you want your thumb on the outside, resting over the middle section of your fingers.

This is a really basic thing that, if not directly pointed out to you, you can easily miss and pay the price for later. And as you get into more complex and, in my opinion, more interesting martial arts, these kinds of basic building blocks can be very easily missed without a live instructor.

That brings me to Iaido, which is one of if not the most interesting martial art that I know of. If you have ever seen an anime, a movie, or a comic with a lot of ninjas or samurais or some other kind of swordfighters, chances are you have seen that one incredibly fast swordsman. That one guy who always carries his sword around in its sheath in his hand, even as he enters combat, and strikes faster than the eye can see. Usually there's a big deal made out of him putting the sword back in its sheath, and just as he does whatever it was he was attacking just falls to pieces.

That is Iaido.

Iaido is sword fighting martial art where the idea is to strike quickly and accurately from a sheathed position, and end in a sheathed position. In the time that your sword was out, you struck at the most vulnerable area, so that by the time your sword is back in its sheath, your opponent is effectively defeated.In a branch off art called Iaijutso, that specifically means that your opponent is dead.

That is the coolest damn thing I have ever heard of.

But can you imagine how precise you have to be for that? And not only precise, but incredibly fast. Every single movement has to be dialed in, unwavering, and flawless. Your muscles have to be so attuned to the action that you could do it in your sleep. Even something so simple as how you put the sword back in its sheath. That is a vital step to the entire process, but it you get it wrong, not only is your entire attack going to be thrown off, you'll probably cut a finger or two off, if not your entire hand.

That is years and years of dedication and practice. Probably even just to the process of sheathing and unsheathing. Much less actually striking. Not only do you have to be precise as all hell, but you have to know exactly what you're aiming for. You have to know every weak point, every soft spot, and then you have to be able to see the very instant that an opportunity arises and have the reflexes to act on it before it is gone.

And that's only one of the arts that interests me.

Re: The wall

Leonidas walked among the battlements, letting his hands drift across the rough stones that made up the walls, feeling their texture and shape under his fingertips as he gazed over the edge. From his position on the inner walls, he could see the commander with his knights-to-be in shining armor, running drills in their heavy suits so as to be better accustomed to them. Though he was familiar with the sounds of their training - the shuffling of sliding steel parts, the heavy breathing, the shouted orders coming one after the other - he could not actually hear them due to the height of the wall.

Looking out past the outer walls, he could see the peasants running their daily lives of bargaining in the marketplace, and working the fields to supply the kingdom with its food. Farm animals grazed, and small caravans made their ways in and out of the more populated city around the castle, trading what could not be easily collected and maintained in the immediate area. Following the outward caravans, his eyes were drawn to the thick forests at the base of the mountain range, which encircled the kingdom to provide protection, and shone in the sunlight thanks to the snow covered peaks high in the sky.

It was a particularly clear day, with not a cloud in sight, which was what had drawn the prince out of the confining space of the inner halls, as well as what allowed him to see so far into the distance.

As his hand came to rest upon one of the lowered portions of the battlements that had been designed to allow for the guards to rain heavy bombardments on any potential invaders, Leonidas smiled to himself. He had another use for the crenellation. With a heave, he lifted himself up and over the wall, dropping down to sit with his legs dangling over the edge. Sitting atop the wall, rather than standing behind it, gave him a less cluttered view, and allowed him to feel the breeze in the air blowing past the entirety of his person.

Leonidas took a deep breath, letting the freshness of the cold air fill his lungs. Inside the castle, the air was consistently muggy and warm. He wasn't permitted outside of its walls very often, so days like this where he could sneak out to the battlements were the closest he got to being away. It gave him a sense of freedom, even if it was only a brief and half-imagined one. Though guards did patrol the area even up this high, he had done this so frequently over the years that they had given up trying to advise him against his actions. He knew that he had nothing to fear. He closed his eyes as he breathed the fresh air, and dreamed of sprouting wings, letting the wind lift him up and carry him away over the lands and seas, able to experience the world and all its wonders. The wind came up from the valley, carrying the smell of the trees from the forest mixed with the smoke coming from the bakery, a mixture itself of crackling fire and rising dough.

"Good morrow, Leonidas," came a soft voice from behind. Leonidas opened his eyes and turned back to see the source of the voice - a slender girl whom he had never seen before. "You looked like you might be needing of some company."

Leonidas took a moment to take her in before he responded. She wore a simple dress of soft green, with an azure pendant hanging from her neck, and her amber hair resting gently just below her shoulders. Her face was thin, but well composed, and her hair was draped around it in an almost picturesque way, and her matching brown eyes practically smiled up at him. "I did not feel particularly lonely," he informed her, "but if you are willing to sit as I do, you are more than welcome to join me."

The girl smiled and stepped towards the wall, much to Leonidas' surprise. He had expected her to leave immediately at such a proposition. She held a hand out to him, and he took it, helping to lift her up onto the wall so that she could take a seat beside him, her legs carefully draped over the edge beside his own. He looked at her once more, now not sure quite what to think of her. "Who are you?" he asked.

The girl looked at him and smiled gently. "Just a friend, your majesty," she responded. He looked into her eyes for a moment, pausing to read her face, then smiled. Together, they turned to look out over the countryside in solemn quietude.

Trunkaphobia

My mom and my dad had a lot of problems with one another, and for a large portion of my childhood this was the key proponent of my life. Today, I remember arguments they had better than even they do. Petty arguments and disagreements that hardly even make sense to me, like why he would kiss her, or whether or not I should go to summer camps. Those like the latter especially confused me even at the time, because I simply didn't understand why that argument was happening, and I wasn't allowed to have a part in it.

Even before I remember anything of my life, these kinds of arguments lead to my parents living in two different houses. Of course, I grew up like that, so for a long time I didn't even realize that that was something out of the ordinary. Regardless, for nearly my entire life, and certainly for all that I can possibly remember, my parents have lived separately from one another.

Eventually, my mother had to move out of the condo that she was living in, due to a series of health problems she was struck with. She got an apartment in a different part of town, closer to my dad's house so that she would be closer to someone who could help her if something happened, and we spent a weekend moving her in.

More than all of the arguments and separation problems, this single weekend was the worst part for me about the problems between my parents.

While we were moving things between houses, we were using multiple cars. My dad's car, which was a standard, small car, and my grandpa's truck. It took us a few trips, and after the second trip, I had an idea to prank my dad. You see, in his car, you could pull down the back seats and open up a hole into the trunk, so that you could store longer items. I had the idea to slip back into the trunk, and when dad came out to put stuff back there, I would pop out and surprise him. The backseat could only be opened from inside of the car, but I wasn't too worried about it. I would only be in there for a minute or two, and leaving the seat open would give away where I was, so I closed it behind me.

Unfortunately, no one told me we weren't using that car on the third trip. 

After a few minutes went by and the trunk didn't open, it began to occur to me that perhaps I had made a bad decision. I kept waiting, and I heard them loading things into the truck, but no one came. It was the middle of summer, and the longer I waited, the hotter it got.

I started screaming. Screaming for dad to come get me, I'm in the trunk, please come get me. Please dad, it's me, I'm in the trunk and it's hot and I feel like I'm dying, please please please. 

But no one came. 

I don't know how long I was actually in there. It felt like hours. It was probably only half of one. By the time my dad realized that no one knew where I was, I had given up screaming. I'm not sure what gave them the idea to check the trunk of dad's car, but they finally opened it up to find me curled up into a ball and crying.

It turns out that my screaming had been muffled by the car, and so my words were unintelligible and distant sounding. They thought the neighbors were beating their kid. I didn't help anymore that day with moving. I just stayed in the house and tried not to cry anymore. 

It was a long time before I got over that. Just the sight of an open trunk sent shivers through my spine, made my eyes water, and made my stomach churn.

This was when I was in first grade. It took until roughly high school for me to get over that fear.

Character development

Despite this being a key aspect of my personality and thought process for the vast majority of my life, I only realized in the last few years just how important character development is to me. Most of my favorite movies, books, and video games all have heavy amounts of character development in them, with a main character who is practically a different person entirely by the end than they were at the beginning. Even after having realized this, it took me a good deal of time to realize just how far that love of development spread, and where it had come from in the first place.

If you've never seen it before, I recommend that next Groundhog's Day you watch the movie by the same name. This is a movie that I legitimately watch every single year on the titular holiday. It's hilarious, but it also has a surprisingly well told story, and an immense amount of character development that takes place over a single day (technically). I've watched this practically since I was born, and only in the past couple years did it occur to me that it was probably a huge influence on me in that regard.

I suppose I can't accurately explain why it is that I enjoy character development so much, however. It's been instilled in me, but when you ask me to explain, it's hard to contain in words. There's just something so interesting about seeing a person grow. Especially when they so frequently go from being an absolutely terrible, despicable person, and in the end they are endearing and worth emulating.

A game that I feel really embodies this principle is Tales of the Abyss. The main character is a childish, spiteful, irritating little shit in every single regard. He has absolutely nothing going for him. But, having been thrown into a series of conflicts, treachery, and death, he finds a reason to actually be alive and to think and to feel, and - despite discovering he is not even the person he thought he was - becomes one of the most relatable and human characters that I think I have ever seen.

I feel like a lot of my favorite characters are ones that undergo these kinds of changes. They are also characters that I find many other people do not enjoy. I think people get stuck on how a character acts at the beginning of the story, and fail to recognize the changes that they go through throughout the story, thus missing out on the way they evolved and changed. I know I've done this before with some characters. Something about who they are at the beginning is just too irritating to let go of, and I refuse, whether consciously or not, to accept that they could be any better than how they started.

That's just an unfair treatment of a character, even if it is a common thing to do. Development isn't something that just happens over night, and it's not something that comes easily. It's a slow process. If a character is completely different at the end than the beginning, and you don't know how it happened, perhaps you should give that character a second try.

Of course, sometimes the writing is just bad and there really wasn't any development. But that's another issue entirely.