Celestial's NaNo without a Name

[Celestial]

Ok, so I have no idea what the plot is going to be, what it's going to be called, where its set and what most of my characters are going to be called but I do have some pretty good ideas about who the characters are going to be and I'd be so disappointed if I could not write about them. <3 Gosh, I have vaguer and vaguer ideas every NaNo.

Basically, there are three characters who for some reason which I have not thought of yet are forced together. Two of them are angels but they're not the traditional nice goody-two-shoes angels, although they do look like them. There is a male angel and a female angel (who I'm still debating about whether I should have them get together or not. >> Depends on theri age and whether it would trigger the squick factor.) One is named Cato, he was born in Roman times in the city of Rome and thus has been in contact with humans since birth. He is nihlistic, cynical, introverted, well-read, an atheist (yes, the whole thing started because I wanted to write an atheist angel. =P) and smokes a lot (all of the angels have some bad habits of various degrees). The second character is a strongly Christian girl (and here is where, Christians of the NTWF, I'm going to need your help to portray your faith with the respect I feel for you guys because I would trust a Celes left to her own devices. ^^) who is fairly optimistic, at least in comparison to the angels, cowardly, non-confrontational and despite being poor, spoilt to an unhealthy degree. The third is a female angel whose name I haven't figured out yet who is grouchy, pessemistic, devil-may-care, good sense of humour and the Leeroy Jenkins of the party. xD Her bad habit is the manipulation of people.

In short, all of my three protagonists have some glaring flaws. =P I hope they'll get better over the course of the novel. Certainly Cato and the female angel learn to be better people and the girl hopefully learns how to cope with the world. The characters balance each other, striking in the end a deal between idealism and pessimisim...I hope. xDD Now to figure out how they get here...

[Jove]

I cannot possibly express how awesome I find the idea of an atheist angel. All your characters sound really interesting, and flawed, yes, but flawed is good. I can't wait to hear more. :3

[Brooke]

This sounds interesting! And an atheist angel, brilliant! XD

[Zylaa]

I have no idea how an atheist angel would be possible, but I'm intrigued. XD

I shall be happy to help with any general Christianity advice you might want as well. :3

[Deleted]

I am going to second (fourth?) the idea of an atheist angel. Already, that is just the coolest character concept imaginable. I can't wait to see more of this. :3

[Celestial]

<33 Eee, people like my ideas!

Anyway, I've had some time to think now and develop the angel's characters a little as well as work on what they'll look like. Cato is going to be fairly slim, black-haired, golden-eyed (all of the angels will have weird eye colours) and have the wings of a bittern, as his lineage traces back to marsh angels (in this world, angels are intelligent beings much like humans and angels have wings depending on where their lineage comes from, so marsh angels have marsh bird wings and coastal angels have seabird wings) and he wears a dark grey greatcoat with many pockets which, like most of his clothes, is cut slightly at the back to let his wings poke through but he can pull it over them, although he looks hunchbacked when he does so. Besides that, he also wears a black shirt, brown trousers, black shoes and a red tie. He was born in the countryside surrounding Rome during the Roman republic. He eventually went to Rome to try and see if he could improve humans in some way. He ended up participating in most wars on the European continent for 2000 years. He gave up midway through WW2 and has been living solitary ever since. He has one kid, although that kid is not important...at least, not at this stage of planning. >>

The female angel will be called Geneva, who is a city angel turned wild angel (with a wild angel being an angel who lives away from humans and has no interaction with them). She has long and messy blonde hair, seagull wings (for which Cato calls her 'gullwings', while she calls him 'Bitterwings.), slightly older and taller than Cato, is malnourished due to living wild for a long time in an increasingly industrial world, purple eyes and fingernails which are like birdclaws as that is what angel nails are actually like. I still cannot decide if she will wear rags or nothing at all (which if I'm going to be honest, seems more fitting. >> She's been living in a forest without either humans or angels for about 400 years and wild angels would have pretty primitive notions of modesty. xDD Either way, she'll get more clothes). Oh and her claim to fame is that before she became wild, she inspired Joan of Arc. xD I'm so lame.

Sadly, the girl has the short end of the stick since I've been so much in love with the two angel characters. ^^ All I know is her religion, her less-than-pleasant parents, a fairly common name (I like Theresa or Kathy but I dunno just yet) and that she serves as a foil to both angels, although she has plenty of emotional issues which she suppresses on her own. Also, I want her to be American for some reason, which might be a problem because the story will be set in Europe and her family is poor. >> Oh well, NaNo excuse plot time (or come up with some unlikely string of coincidences, I dunno. xDD)

I'm sure there's bits that I've thought about that I missed out so if something does not make sense, just ask. ^^ I know I've made angels into an actual creature that could exist (except for their freaky 10,000 year old lifespans but shush, that's a spoiler in a way I haven't figured out yet. >>).

[spoilers=Ending spoilers]I've been thinking about the ending as well and about the theological implications of angels pretending to be divine beings to preserve their existance as well as having two of my main characters be atheists versus one ultra-religious girl. Obviously I would really hate to offend anybody so I forsook my original idea of there being no God not only for that reason but because the existance of a God would be wonderful character development for Cato and Geneva but having God be apathetic so as to not encourage dependence on him and have the girl grow a spine instead of relying on God to do something that she can do herself.

Also, cliche as this sounds, I want the angels to get together and to adopt the girl and raise her like they do angel children, as angels get raised differently than humans. I'd love to close the novel with Geneva and Cato swooping in to protect their new human child. =3[/spoiler]

[Zylaa]

Since you are being creative with angels' wings, I thought you'd appreciate that there's at least one depiction of angels with parrot wings, peacock wings, and other really bright and pretty wings. ^_^

[Celestial]

Oct 16, 2011 0:10:30 GMT -5 Zylaa said:

Since you are being creative with angels' wings, I thought you'd appreciate that there's at least one depiction of angels with parrot wings, peacock wings, and other really bright and pretty wings. ^_^

Thanks for bringing that to my attention! ^_^ That's really cool and a beautiful painting as well.

[Celestial]

Alright well...I've got a plot now and Geneva has become an antagonist (albeit a broken, sympathetic one). It's on my NaNo website profile if anybody wants to read it.

But I'm having a problem with my human character, who I decided to call Julia. I'm not sure I'll enjoy writing her and that she will serve no purpose in the story or whatever purpose she will serve can be done just as well by somebody else. I guess she is a grounding, positive influence on the angels but she stands the risk of being too perfect, too annoyingly naive to redeem her.

I guess I can give her some character development to make her into a person who is more grounded in reality and wiser, like I did last year with whats-her-face, Lilly, but that would only be retreating ground that I covered with her. Plus the leaps in logic that I have to take to get her to her starting position are really huge. Maybe it would be better if Cato and Geneva, through their shared experiences, developed by themselves. But if so, how do I do that? And how, if I remove her, do I round out my cast?

I dunno. I guess I still have a week to decide.

[Celestial]

Less than three hours until kickoff and I'm...very scared. I'm not sure I should do this. I'll still do it, knowing how stubborn I am but I'm already getting the week 2 hatred. >< My idea seems crap, my characters are cliche, my story makes no sense and just, urgh.

Maybe it's because I'm tired or because I've grown complacent or because I have lots of work to do besides NaNo but second thoughts are never nice. But meh, too late to back out of it now. Might as well keep ploughing on and if it falls flat, at least I tried.