Winter is here

[skew_whiff]

Oh boy, it's here all right. There's ice on the pavements and a chill wind in the air, and I've caught my first cold of the season (luckily, it seems to be of the mild variety easily managed with ibuprofen and lots of strong coffee).

Still stoked about Christmas - the presents are mostly bought and my decorations are already up, not that it took long, seeing as it consists entirely of an advent calendar and a bauble dangled from one of the fronds of my potplant. There's still time to request cards, if you want one! I've got one batch sent off, but I've got enough cards left to do more.

Otherwise, life is okay. Nothing back from the colleges I applied to yet, but the deadline for Fall admissions is in January, so I doubt there'll be anything until some time after then. Work is dull, but unlike the last place, doesn't send me home filled with rage; also, nobody notices if I disappear for long periods of time and hide in a spare room reading articles about the Red Army on Wikipedia, so that's okay. I've been approached to write for an online magazine, completely out of the blue - not paid, mind, and from previous encounters with these 'hey I could totally run the next Jezebel/Awl/Vice from my bedroom with a staff of unpaid strangers' ventures I sincerely doubt it'll still be going in three months' time, but hey, it's at least practice.

Though talking of writing, boy, am I failing hard at producing any fic. So with that procrastination in mind - and maybe a kick up the arse in terms of thinking about what I write - have a meme that's been going round!

Pick a character I've written and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

Preferably one I've written recently/regularly enough that I'm likely to actually have five concepts, or the answer you receive is likely to be disappointing.

Comments

[newredshoes]

I mean, is it cheating to say Harry Welsh? Or Kitty? How about Kitty?

[skew_whiff]

Cheating? Absolutely not!

So, without further ado, some of the Basic Fundamentals of Harry Welsh:

1. He acts first and thinks later. I don't need to really explain that one, it's canon (and only reinforced by everything I've read about the real man). Harry doesn't hang about for ages pondering all the outcomes and wondering about his own abilities, he just goes right ahead and does stuff. It's both his greatest strength and biggest failing.

2. He's very emotional. I don't mean that in the sense he's wildly irrational and all over the place, just that Harry feels things strongly and he doesn't hide it (see point 1). Whatever he's feeling, you'll soon know about, and he's appallingly bad at staying poker-faced when he ought to be keeping his thoughts to himself.

3. He's a man of great faith. I don't mean religiously - although that's certainly something I take into account - just that in general, he tends to hold very strong beliefs. You can argue all you like, you won't change his mind, particularly if that involves anything he places a lot of hope in (eg. the justness of their cause, Winters' abilities as a leader, that Kitty Grogan is waiting for him, etc.)

4. He's a hopeless romantic. Again, canon. But it's one of the things I like a lot about Harry, that he may be a loud, scruffy, hard-drinking, hard-fighting paratrooper, but he's devoted to his girl and completely unembarrassed about wanting nothing more from life than marriage, children, and all that other domestic fluff and nonsense. All that typical guy-talk cynicism about marriage being a trap makes no sense to Harry.

5. He's smarter than he looks. At first glance you just see a cheerful little drunk, but Harry's not stupid. He may never be subtle, but he's observant and sharp, and in living for the moment, takes in quite a lot of what he sees going on at any particular time. After all, this is a guy who after the war got an MA and had a successful career in education - he doesn't parade around his knowledge like Nixon, but there's a lot more on his mind than just booze and Kitty. It's just that those two things do take up a lot of his time.


As for Kitty - well, with my knowing next to nothing about her, I don't think I can come up with five points, but I can certainly say that I basically just set about thinking up the kind of woman I thought would make the best counterpart to Harry. Therefore, just as witty and mischievous and strong-willed, but a little more sensible and grounded; equal parts partner in crime and necessary calming influence.

[heartequals]

Ack-Ack! And/or Hillbilly!

[skew_whiff]

I've already answered for Ack-Ack over on LJ, so I'll go for my other favourite marine. Almost all of my characterisation of Hillbilly Jones is based on speculation, and most of my backstory for him is completely made-up, but I'm pretty attached to my reading of him and I think it fits well with what we see on screen. So with no further ado:

1. He's had a hard life
I don't mean that in some kind of sob-story, perpetual loser kind of way, but that an important part of my version of Hillbilly is that he is very familiar with hardship and self-sacrifice. I don't know much about the upbringing and circumstances of the real man, but I took what I do know (rural, large family, disabled father etc.) and stitched together a backstory in which Hillbilly has always known hardship and self-sacrifice. He doesn't feel sorry for himself about it - it just means that he's very used to hunger and hard work and putting others before himself, and sometimes neglects his own welfare because he's so preoccupied with everybody else's. Which leads nicely into -

2. He's a worrier
He might not necessarily say anything about it, but you can see it on his face - Hillbilly fusses about things. He doesn't scare or panic easily, and in a crisis he's very good at keeping a cool head, but when there isn't something immediately demanding his attention he has a habit of mothering the fuck out of anything that moves. Sometimes it works (in a busy house or a barrack hut there's almost always something or someone needs tidying or fixing or looking after), sometimes he can drive people mad. One of Ack-Ack's special gifts as a leader is that he can spot the warning signs and knows how to reassure Hillbilly before he gets seriously bothered.

3. He's religious
I don't know entirely where I got this from, because it's not mentioned at all in the series, but one of the important parts of my characterisation of Hillbilly is his religion. He's not showy or judgmental about it, he doesn't much mind what other folks think, but his beliefs are important to him. He has his doubts at times, and can take or leave the church (he likes the community, isn't too bothered by the specifics; he was raised Methodist, but doesn't think one denomination is better than others), but finding time to go off and pray and just work out a few things between him and God makes him feel much better about the world.

4. He's an introvert
As above, his time to himself is important to him. It took me a while to get this, because he's so focussed on other people, and not shy or antisocial, but on later viewings it became clear - lack of social ineptitude doesn't mean someone can't be introverted, and Hillbilly values his time to himself. In the series, when he's not with Ack-Ack, he's often quietly thinking alone, and that linked neatly with all the backstory stuff I'd come up with. He's good with people, loves his family, but he needs his own space.

5. He's a folkie
Okay, this I admit is complete made-up headcanon and probably not at all true to life, but fuck it. Everybody knows Hillbilly was good with a guitar, and everyone has their own take on it - some lean towards country, some indie (in modern AUs at least) and in my case, I just take it as an excuse to indulge my fondness for folk and blues. There was this whole exciting revival of the folk scene going on in 1940s America, and damned if I ain't gonna riff on that in my stories. The Hillbilly Jones of my fic is a sort of romanticised, Woody Guthrie-esque figure, a wandering minstrel who travelled to find work and then travelled to war, telling himself times could never get too bad as long as he had his guitar. It's probably not at all true to life, but that's okay, it's not meant to be.

[heartequals]

It's probably not at all true to life, but that's okay, it's not meant to be.

It's a great image though!

He might not necessarily say anything about it, but you can see it on his face - Hillbilly fusses about things.

I love this about him. There's some scene with him, Ack-Ack and Sledge where you can just see the worry on his face while Sledge is talking and toeing the line between coping and breakdown. (I can't remember the context of the scene, but the mix of Ack-Ack caring for Sledge and Hillbilly looking worried was a really good reflection of their importance/leadership.)