museworks

I've been thinking about this a bit lately, for the writing I do for Lucrezia. It's difficult to do, to be honest; difficult for a variety of reasons. While I do not, thankfully, have personal experience from which to draw upon when writing for her it's still problematic sometimes. Because the way I have the character is difficult and unpleasant. I can't say I created her that way, but rather it developed from the backstory I'd had. I already had established at creation that she's from a family of "minor" nobility, and that she was technically married but "estranged" from her husband. That she had "run away" from the marriage. I didn't fill in more details until later, and admittedly, I hadn't expected to make it take such a dark turn for the poor woman, but eh.

I've come up with some pretty horrible things that Lucy went through. It's why her brother went from first being possibly just a 'vague, untrusted family member with whom she occasionally corresponded' to 'a link to stability', because I just don't want to make a character completely without hope, you know? I mean, she could have had some hope on her own, but I like the idea of her having someone good in her life without necessarily having to depend on other players; it would help ensure she remains playable should something happen with another character and/or their player. (Not that I'm inflexible anyway, but it's nice to know I don't necessarily have to ponder various contingencies or do story gymnastics to keep moving forward.)

Overall I've been trying to treat the abuse matter reasonably and even a little 'delicately' for lack of a better term; that is, I didn't want to be too heavy-handed with it and just throw out machine-gun entries of omgwtfawful. I wanted to avoid "abuse porn", to put it bluntly; like there are movies termed "torture porn", like 'Saw' and such in which one of the main points is to see all that pain and suffering and gore and all, I didn't want my writing for her to turn into "let's see what Lucy went through this time". Truth be told, I can imagine all sorts of terrible things-- and have written some, physical and psychological-- but I simply don't want to go into all of the detail, even if she is writing it out to get it out of her head and to tell her brother someday. Hence the recent mention of her not being sure she needed to write about that party because Ches actually had been there.

There is still more to write for her on that front, but I think she's getting into the area of acknowledging it enough to let go a bit more-- shifting from withdrawn and walled-up to angry and raging. Which is, I think for her, an improvement and indeed sign of progress. We'll see how it affects her writing style with how she feels when relating a memory or a feeling.

I sound so terribly clinical, and I don't mean to. I don't even really know how things will go for Lucy, beyond the fact that they will slowly improve as far as her coming to terms with her life is concerned. She's slowly making her way in that direction, and somewhat helped along by some awesome folks (a couple of

vorrick's characters in particular). I don't know what all will happen with her, especially where others' characters are concerned, but should be interesting.

Thank you to everyone with whom I've been able to interact where she's concerned, even if it's just a couple of offhand comments in the Tome. :) I know she isn't necessarily the easiest character with whom to interact, because in company she is so very rigidly self-controlled, but I promise everything has an effect on her, even if it's subtle.

I hope this made sense, as it was semi-stream-of-consciousness. But just wanted to think 'out loud' (or in type, as the case may be) about things.