Wednesday Creativity
Happy Halloween, one and all! Hope your holiday was spooky, entertaining and full of candy. And if you celebrate All Saints Day, hope it’s a good one.
Welcome to the second edition of Wednesday Creativity where we (I) discuss all things within the creative process, as well reveal characters of my own creation. Last week, we (I) talked about the quote “Write now, edit later”, sharing how my process writing and editing. Done under a brand-new segment we’ll be calling Wednesday Creativity, I found last week’s blog to be quite fun to write.
Last week, I had promised to talk about Veronica Harlington within the Just One book, the villain. I’ve thought about it though and that would have either been a very short post or it would have been far too revealing one as a lot about her background is to be revealed later on in the book. So, instead of just telling you about Veronica, I’ve decided to share with you three characters, each villain in their own way. In truth, I went through my archives to find other villains I wrote, but it actually proved to be rather difficult because even my Sith in the Star Wars Roleplay are human in nature and have their good and bad sides. Without further ado, I give you the three….
Once again, Happy Halloween.
Veronica Harlington
Starting off with the promised villain, Veronica shows up in Just One quite out of the blue and is soon to be revealed to be the head of an organization call the Division. Their job is… you might have guessed it… to hunt aliens. She seems very young for her position and incredibly calm considering the task she faces. The team arrives to Colletown after murder that can’t be properly classified. The autopsy report is somewhat gruesome and hard to stomach. The chief of police, of course, isn’t equipped to handle this sort of situation and that’s where Agent Harlington arrives.
- Veronica strikes fear into Connor Flores, a man who appears to fear nothing.
- She seems all too well informed of who Eveleen is, and who Connor is.
- She doesn’t seem to be in a rush to arrest our Custodian alien.
- And could she be using alien tech to do her job?
There is a lot about Veronica Harlington that doesn’t make sense. Even the way she got her promotion years back will be a subject of Just One: Weight of the World (the third book). She’s not a good guy, and she can’t be redeemed, the best way to describe Veronica to say that she is too far gone to be saved.
And all she wants is Eveleen and the artefact.
Now, that’s not exactly the job of the Division in charge of hunting aliens, is it?
Veronica is a gorgeous woman, to say at least. Long brown hair, brown eyes. My choice of play-by for her is Amy Acker. It’s a choice I made a long time ago and one that still fits. She wears floral dresses and sharp suits. She doesn’t look like an federal agent, and she certainly doesn’t act like one…
What do you think of Veronica now? I would love to hear your predictions on her. Why do you think she is the way she is, and why is she only focused on our leading lady, and not the rest of the aliens?
Corran Xothorn
I’ve touched upon this character a couple of times, but he hasn’t gotten much time.
He’s the twin brother of Kivana Eli Xothorn. The unwanted son of the once ruling Empress of the alien system, and the boy who survived because of his big sister. He shouldn’t have existed; all the warning sings were there that he shouldn’t have been there. Perhaps you could look at him as all the bad that did not become Kivana Eli, though she surely has her own bad side.
Corran spent most of his young life trapped in the mind of a boy.
He grew up with Kivana Eli, Zannder and Solana. He fell in love with the Hadini princess from the moment he met her, just as his sister had fallen for Zannder.
Everything would have gone fine if only…
- …he had stayed a child…
- …Nicasia hadn’t existed…
- …their ancestor had not sent the child away…
- …Kivana Eli had recognized the reason for her pain early…
A lot of what happens with Corran has to do with how the main story transpired in the past. If things had gone differently for Kivana Eli and Zannder, his life would have been different. He would have never become who he became. We look at Corran as the villain of the story, the true one. Yet, everything that occurs throughout the series will show there is someone or some people that were darker, had more influence upon the storyline and were the reason we have our main villain…
Corran has lived out his life while others started again. He is a grown man, in body and mind, when Just One: Edge of Never (the second book) introduces him. In Just One, he is mentioned and remembered through Eveleen and Valerie discovering their past. As an adult, I imagine him as Simon Baker, with enlarged black irises. He has lighter hair than Kivana Eli does, which is the way genes manifest him being an anomaly in the bloodline.
What do you think of Corran? Despite the fact that I wrote a villain, I feel bad for him. A lot of what happens to him is not his fault, and even though he’s done all the bad things he did, there was no going back for him. Becoming an adult meant losing the kindness within his heart, and took away the only chance he had to have his true love… Solana.
I love Corran. There’s something innocent about the way he’s written, even with everything he’s done and been through. I hope you like him too.
Tell me what you think of him so far.
Naha’va
Stepping out of Just One, we’ll quickly drop over to my Star Wars roleplaying time. I have written a good few Sith characters over the years and I love all of them. Yet, none of them are one sided bad guys. They all have their good and bad sides; they all have strong emotions and have loved in the past or present. There are reasons for who they are and why they are the way they are.
And then we have Naha’va. I have no excuse for her.
Labelled HE-781267, Naha’va was created artificially on Kamino a year before the First Galactic Empire was proclaimed. This is where you go back to the second trilogy of Star Wars (or the first, timeline wise) when Anakin Skywalker grew up and Palpatine built his empire. She was a glitch in the system, produced a female. She was only kept alive because the Chancellor himself deemed it.
- She was trained to become a Royal Guard.
- She was trained to use two lightsabers.
- She was raised to be a deadly killing machine devoted only to the emperor.
- Her only ambition was to become his Hand.
She had one child in her life, with a rebel fan on Naboo. This was only intended as part of her plan to lay low until she was summoned back to the fold. The truth of who she is, has her sent away.
Naha’va embodies to immortal ambition, refusing to recognize old age and pass on. She’ll have been cloned multiple times throughout the timeline, trained apprentices and even her own daughter’s clone.
There is a lot of backstory for who Naha’va is. What is important is that, her whole life has been devoted to a figure that would eventually be long gone. Her ambition to build an eternal empire when all the ones throughout the Star Wars extended universe rise and fall has never died. She is a cold person, willing to kill and sacrifice her own family for the ultimate goal… we could argue that perhaps she grew up loveless and this influenced her behaviour, yet, I’ve had characters with childhoods like that, but were capable of human emotion. Naha’va is not.
It’s like a programming inside her, preventing her from caring.
As her long life and multiple clones, Naha’va has had many play-bys through her writing. She started off as Sela Ward, when she was originally a minor character in her original daughter’s life. Other faces included Phoebe Tonkin, Rachel McAdams, Mia Wasikowska, Bridget Regan and Alisha Wainwright (last two by possession). Naha’va is essentially someone who refuses to die and let the galaxy move on.
Be honest, would you hang out with a woman like Naha’va? I wouldn’t. Sometimes I did wonder why was she even still around? Anytime I thought I was done with the character; she would find a way to come back and cause more mayhem. It’s one of those characters you can’t get rid of..
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I’d love to hear your opinions on these characters. Do you like them? Do you hate them? Would you like to hear more about them? Would you like more Character Introduction blog posts like this, where multiple characters are covered? Let me know!
This was blog two of the brand-new segment Wednesday Creativity, brought to you by this writer’s passion for writing. There are no sponsors for this post.
~Love, L.V.
L.V. Luca 