A Short Opinion

I haven't posted in a while, so here are my less-than-entertaining thoughts about life.

Today was co-op. My mom, my friend Emily (of doomed razor fame) and I did an interview for writing class. It was so much fun, but now my brain is dead. That is bad, considering tomorrow is Chemistry (moles... moooooooooles!) and my brain can't be dead for Chemistry.

Today was also Lit class. We're reading Ivahoe, and one of the characters (Locksley is his name) is the equivalent of Robin Hood. All of us LOVE Locksley and LOVE Robin Hood. I personally think it's wonderful that in the wake of great events and substantial, formidable evils and spectacularly glorious bravery, we have such people as Locksley/Robin Hood. If we didn't have them, I'd be tempted to think that people were so very different then, so far from who I am, that I couldn't understand them.

King Arthur is my personal favorite maybe-true person. I like to believe that Arthur was real, in some form. He is so deeply imbedded in English history and mythology that it would be strange if some such person didn't exist, or maybe even several persons who made up, together, this King Arthur that we have come to love.

I was so inspired by this merry brave King that I decided to write about him in one of my stories. It is a rather unusual story, taking places over thousands of years and told in several perspectives. I put in some interesting twists to his character. His name isn't actually Arthur, but rather, his title (since he is a warrior) is the Bear. The word Arthur means 'bear'. He is sort of elected leader of his small city-state that he recaptures from the enemy, but not officially. He works through a weak monarch. He's supposed to be married to a girl named Gwynnhyfvar, who is a Welsh princess, but we all know the story of King Arthur's misfortune with his wife Queen Guinevere. This is the man I wrote to be King Arthur, but not in the same way as so many see him.

Thinks like these add interest to one's story, because they not only add credibility, but they make people, places, events and times real to a reader.

I call people like King Arthur, Robin Hood, Salome and the like the forgotten heroes of history. We don't even necessarily know they existed, and if they did exist, we are certainly not sure what they were really like. But certain actions who never have their source identified, certain character traits, certain things suggested by the story can be applied to these forgotten heroes to give them a new role in a story where they star now as heroes, and not simply characters who are and then are not.

It gives the writer ultimate freedom. If nothing is known about someone but the events and people surrounding him or her, the writer is free to do whatever he or she wants with the person. At the end of everything, this means that these people can even answer nagging questions that we've always had about a time period.

I think they're fun.

Have any of you ever thought about characters or people like these? Have any of you attempted writing them?

Forgive this rambling... it's my excuse for a blog update. : )