D is for Dancer

A bit of a letdown from Nanowrimo, the start of the Christmas season and summer as well as Test cricket kind of conspired to keep me from posting over the last week and a bit, but now I'm free and clear and thought I'd go back to the Realmspace dictionary.

Now D could stand for nothing else other than Dancer, as he is the hero, central character and narrator of Realmspace.

He's not actually the oldest character in terms of when he was created. I think that honour still goes to Aleanaes and that's kind of fitting really, when you consider her role as a Benefactress and as Dancer's mentor in many ways.

Dancer made his first appearance as a rather generic elf as the central character in a short story I wrote as a teenager, when I was still marshalling ideas and getting up the courage to try another novel.

He was a very different sort of character then. He looked much the same, short, slight, dark hair, although he did have the pointed ears of an elf, something that the current model doesn't have. He was also mute, preferring to express himself through the medium of dance, which is of course what gave him the name.

Over the years I refined him and added the dark spirit Sneak into the mix. Sneak lives within Dancer and generally only comes out when needed, mostly when the host is under threat. Other refinements were the power of speech. In fact the new Dancer was actually quite mouthy and generally ready with a wisecrack or a snarky rejoinder. He also became a thief of no mean ability.

The alter ego of the bullied teen Darren is a fairly new addition. Darren really only came into being because I needed to anchor the story to a contemporary earthbound setting for a number of reasons and Darren allowed me to do that. This also gives the reader the advantage of looking at the two, comparing them and seeing the differences between the two in both how they act and their contrasting lifestyles.

The character has probably endured for as long as he has because I like him. I think you need to like your main characters on some level. I have to admit I do some awful things to him and I seem to delight in breaking his heart, but I do like him and he's a good person to have in your corner when things get tight and you need an escape plan. Besides if he weren't on the right side there's no way the Gleems would hang out with him.

A is for Aleanaes

I've been toying with this idea for a while and I thought I may do it here. This is kind of like a Realmspace wiki or more accurately a dictionary. As I'm doing it in dictionary form, it begins with A, because I'm odd like that.

That's Panacea from the Asterix books, but I'm going to use her to give people an idea of what Aleanaes looks like. If you give her pointed ears then it is pretty much as I see her, the other thing is that I can barely draw a decent stick figure.

Interestingly enough Aleanaes was probably the first Realmspace character that I ever created. She was a goddess of love in that fantasy epic I wrote in my early teens, and once she made herself at home in my head she simply never went away.

Physically she's largely always been the same, although she has changed in personality and her function in my fictional universe.

She's an important character in Realmspace, although she's not what I'd call a major character. In film terms she'd be a supporting actress.

She's the Benefactress of Intellida. Most Realms have a Benefactor or a Benefactress. There are some that have gods or goddesses that fulfil a similar role, some have both. Earth is often looked down on and thought of as backward by those from other Realms, because not only does it not have a Benefactor, it isn't even aware of their existence.

Aleanaes lives in an incredible house on a different plane of existence, but she is a frequent visitor to her Realm and quite protective of it.

She has an interesting relationship with Dancer. She generally uses him as an agent, in fact her personal assistant views him that way, but she considers herself a friend and also has a rather big sister type dynamic with the young shifter.

Racially she's an elf, hence the pointed ears and the fact that she doesn't seem to age, although the agelessness could also be one of the benefits of being a Benefactress.

She keeps a household staff that is mostly animals she rescued from desperate situations on Earth and then anthropomorphised to suit her needs. Her butler is a lowland gorilla, her maid is a mouse and her driver is a runner lizard. She also has three bodyguards, who are a boxer dog, a rat and a giant panda. The only member of her staff that isn't anthropomorphised is her personal assistant; Natasha. Natasha is cat who hails from a Realm full of cats and even without the opposable thumbs does an incredibly efficient job for her mistress.

Her full name is Aleanaes Goldenhair and many add the honorific Mistress to it.

If you want a pronunciation guide, and I do realise her name is a bit of a mouthful, it's said like this: Al-ee-a-nay-es.

There we have it. A for Aleanaes.