[Saxony Tarn]

Two Elves having a tiff over parchment! Uff da! Thinhyandoiel, that's priceless & i'd probably get a kick out of reading it! Are you planning to post it anywhere (or sell it to a 'zine where we can see it in print?)

As for my smart-arse Elf, he seems to be everybody's foil (with the Dwarf bravely standing in as his straight-man and the half-Orc getting in her one-liners where she can) but is primarily concentrating his razor wit on hazing 'the new guy', that being the one who tried to upstage the party leader in one of my earlier posts. Not that he really needs to, said new guy has let on that he's having enough problems dealing with said party leader, as in, he can stomach playing second banana to some Ranger, but taking orders -- in combat -- from a woman -- even one powerful enough to be able to drop a proverbial game token on him and hit "Continue Game" (or flip him on the pavement of Minas Tirith if he doesn't shape up) -- appears to be more than he can handle. Ah, Boromir, welcome to Purgatory.

("and I tire of having to point out the obvious to you -- you may well be the Captain of the entire armed forces of Gondor, but WE ARE NOT THE ARMY OF GONDOR!!" -- Iarangol Nurborniel, parry and riposte)

That's the wonderful thing about it -- I hadn't planned for them to start arguing then, but it came out, and i liked what i saw and let it stand (in fact, kept refining it) especially since the strong averse reaction to being overruled by an assertive female just seemed so appropriate! (as previously confessed, all that Savage Sword of Conan & such as a child seems to have lent itself masterfully to the occasion)

Which brings me to my next Molotov cocktail, given the amount of Elf Princesses running away to fight like their brothers on the fanfic section here -- anyone have a great example of smashing the expected gender boundaries when creating characters that they'd like to share? (this'll likely be more resonant with the elder members of this thread as the difference was more pronounced in earlier generations)

Alternately, while i'm on the subject of my favorite member of the cast -- which character do you find keeps your interest as the author longer -- a good, pure, competent and capable hero/ine who can triumph over just about anything, or a scaled-down, reasonably pure, good and able character with a few flaws that you can exploit? My vote's always for the latter -- i think they're more interesting (and they certainly keep me more engaged in loading plot complications on them just to see how much they can take before they crack, or reading to see how they get themselves out of mess after mess...)

s.t.

|_|) <-- stoking up on the caffeine now, to go home and write like a demon tonight -- the half-Orc is slated for some camera time. And i guess you could TECHNICALLY say she's Lurtz's mother. i'm grinning in anticipation of some character-revealing conflict-laden dialogue already...