Writer’s Block – bah.

I hate writer’s block.  I hate it with a passion.  Especially, as the case has been recently, when I have two other people waiting for me to write something so they can approve it, it can be posted, and we can move on to the fine art of revenge best being served cold and by blood knights, death knights, and very angry priests.

I finally was able to break through the block this morning, thankfully.  And in so doing, I learned something.  The block I’d been having was dealing with a fight scene.  It was a scene I was trying to keep as fair as possible to both characters, so that said confrontation could end as a draw.  I was trying to block the fight out in my head as though I were staging it, so that I could get the scene written and move on.

And Destril was refusing to cooperate.

He just didn’t wanna do it, and kept telling me so.  “I don’t think we need to do this – can’t we just move on to the part where the DK shows up?”  But I kept trying to get the scene blocked, and it was going precisely nowhere.  This morning, I finally listened to the priest.  I tried writing the scene from the PoV of another character, and didn’t really give a lot of detail about what was actually going on in the brawl.  And finally, Des was satisfied, started co-operating, and let me get the scene finished.

I learned that if I have a character who’s just being that damn stubborn, I probably should listen to what he has to say, because he may have a better suggestion for structure and pacing than what I had originally planned.  Lesson learned…good to know.

Now…on to the vengeance bits.

Meet the Residents – Destril

Well, it’s about time I got around to this.  The first good look at the residents of the blog.  First up, is Father Destril Redwing.

Destril here, as it’s probably obvious, is a blood elf priest.  A shadow priest, to be exact, which means that most of the time, he’s more concerned with melting minds than saving lives.  That being said, he’s also a terribly sweet-tempered individual…even though that aspect of him got rather lost during a bad stretch over the past few months.  Now that he’s a married man, let’s hope we continue to see more of that side of him.

Des has gotten something of a reputation for keeping his word.  There’s one promise he’s broken accidentally…and that incident made for some interesting drama with his now-sister-in-law…and one he tends to break more or less deliberately – his promise to try to put his own health first when helping people.  Destril doesn’t do things halfway, so when he commits himself to a purpose, he goes all-out, which means there’s a very good chance he’s going to wind up rather wrecked in the helping or the accomplishing of the purpose.

Des also collects animals – non-combat pets and mounts.  When he was a kid, he wanted to be a Farstrider up until he discovered his vocation, so the zoo he surrounds himself with is the only expression of that thwarted desire he has.  And for the record, the scaly one with the green eyes in the photo is Temeraire, who’s probably one of the few creatures in the household to really know all that’s going on.

Lots of the Sin’dorei I know seem to have a British accent of some flavor or other – but not Des.  His voice, to me, is straight accent-less American.  He’s such a non-conformist.  Of my blood elves, Des also seems to be one of the ones with a wicked sense of humor.  Dandy’s got one too, but it seems to be more gallows humor and wordplay than Destril’s whimsy and deep appreciation of silliness.

Des came from a large family, having 2 sisters and 2 brothers.  He was the middle child but the oldest son.  All his siblings are dead now, save the youngest, his brother Severilias.  Sev’s a warlock, of all things – he didn’t have the focus to be a mage.  Des is as supportive as he can be…he just wishes Sev wouldn’t send his imp with messages at 3 in the morning.  He cares very deeply for Sev, though – he raised him, and he’s the only blood family he’s got left.

That’s Des in a nutshell.  Who knows which of the others we’ll see a post on next?

If just one person believes in you…

Deep enough, and strong enough, believes in you…
Hard enough, and long enough,
It stands to reason, that someone else will think
`If he can do it, I can do it.`

I suppose it’s no great secret that the biggest challenge I’m having to overcome in tanking with Dandy is my own lack of self-confidence. Given that the Blood tree had a rather shaky start when the expansion launched, and having only very recently come into its own, it always seemed like the people who were convinced I couldn’t and shouldn’t tank far outnumbered the ones who thought I could. But there’s something to be said for a persistent and vocal minority…

Making it: two whole people, who believe in you
Deep enough, and strong enough,
Believe in you.
Hard enough and long enough
There`s bound to be some other person who
Believes in making it a threesome,
Making it three…..
People you can say: believe in me…..

And if three whole people,
Why not — four?
And if four whole people,
Why not–more, and
more, and
more….

None of this is to say that I don’t have supportive tanking mentors – I know I do. And I am deeply indebted to them for the help and the encouraging words and the advocating of patience, especially when I needed it the most. And slowly yet surely, it seems like other people have begun to join that supportive minority.

And when all those people,
Believe in you,
Deep enough, and strong enough,
Believe in you…
Hard enough, and long enough

It took words of confidence this weekend to get me to try something I didn’t think I could do. And as it turned out…I could do it after all. But if it weren’t for that friend…I would never have tried in the first place. For those words…thanks, Keltyr. It meant a lot.

It stands to reason that you yourself will
Start to see what everybody sees in
You…

And for everyone else who’s stood by me and told me “yes you can, just keep at it” – thank you, too. Thanks for your faith and your patience and your willingness to pay repair bills while I sussed out the ins and outs of tanking as Blood. I couldn’t do it without you guys. You’re the best.

And maybe even you,
Can believe in you… too!

Lyrics – “Just One Person” from Snoopy

Friday Five Hundred: Birth-Day

Yeah, I know I promised some getting-to-know you stuff.  But this bit sort of wrote itself, for the Friday Five Hundred over at Too Many Annas.  You wanna check out the awesomeness that is Too Many Annas, there’s a link over there just to the right.  Anyway, here’s the challenge:

Write an event, a situation, or a scene that involves your character as a child/teenager and has some impact on your character later in life.

This ficlet comes from Keilos up there.  He’s a very broken kid, really.  This piece takes place when his older brother is the elven equivalent of fourteen, and he’s about seven.

Keilos Dawnstar peered through the bushes at the riot of banners and color on the far side of the garden. Something special was going on, the young blood elf knew that…but what? A circus, perhaps, with bears and tigers and acrobats from far-off lands, where the humans lived? Probably not, he thought. Circus only comes in highsummer, Meith says…and it’s not May Day yet.

He’d overheard the servants talking, something about his older brother and a “birth-day.” Kei wasn’t really sure what a birth-day was. He knew it was something Meithrin had and he didn’t, so maybe a “birth-day” was something to do with how long your hair was or something like that.

Maybe a birth-day is like “friends”…that’s something else Meith has and I don’t. I wonder if you have to get sick a lot to get friends…Meith was sick all the time a couple years ago, and he has lots of friends.

As he watched the group of young Sin’dorei gathering in the garden, Keilos wondered if friends and chicken pox were the same thing…if so, well, he’d had those, so maybe he could catch friends, too. He spotted his brother Meithrin, who was obviously the focus of the group. When their eyes met, the other boy frowned as though he’d just thought of something. He turned back towards his nurse to speak to her. Remembering the scoldings he’d gotten for spying on people, Kei took that moment to retreat through the bushes towards the house.

–

“Kei? You awake?” Keilos opened his eyes to find his brother standing in a patch of moonlight, staring at him.

“Yeah. Whattaya want?”

Meithrin frowned at his younger sibling and padded further into the room on bare feet. “I asked Nurse why you weren’t at my party today. She said it wasn’t permitted.” The older boy ran a hand through his hair, his frown growing deeper. “That’s what they say all the time. I don’t understand.”

Uneasily, Keilos shrugged as he dropped down from his bed to face his brother. “Doesn’t matter, I guess.”

“I guess.” As Meith stood in the moonlight, watching him, Kei took a long moment to look at his brother. He was older than Kei by several years, and this spring, had started growing in fits and starts. He was taller now, and leaner, not a man for sure, but changing, not quite a kid like Kei himself anymore. As the silence stretched, Meithrin brightened. He held out the plate in his other hand. “I brought you some cake.”

The younger blood elf nodded thoughtfully, taking the cake without saying anything. After another long silence, Meithrin nodded. “G’night, Kei.”

Keilos waited till his brother had left, the padding of his feet fading to silence on the stone floors, before he curled up in the moonlight to devour the cake, making sure he got every crumb from the plate and licking the stolen sweetness of the frosting from his fingers.

Meet the Residents

As you can see, there’s a spiffy new image on the front page.  Those three dashing young gentlemen up there are the shadow priest and the death knight referenced in my blog’s title, as well as one other you’re going to hear a lot about.  If you can’t figure out which is which, I feel sorry for ya.

On the left is Father Destril Redwing. “Des,” as his friends and intimates call him, was my first serious Horde character, and came about entirely by accident.  I swore up and down that I would never seriously level a priest because at the time, all they were allowed to do was heal – and I wanted to kill stuff.  Then Burning Crusade hit, and with it came the rise of the shadow priest.  For a lark, I rolled one on a different server and found that I quite liked melting face.  So as soon as I had the character slot open on Feathermoon, I recreated Destril on my home server.  One day, I saw a post on the forums indicating that a rather well-known PC had gone missing, and decided to get the level 20-something at the time Destril involved in the RPs.  This decision eventually got me to fall in with Noxilite, and the rest is history.

Now, in the middle?  That’s Dandill Boughstrider.  (As a side note, I’ve discovered that that’s pronounced “BOW-strider.”  Don’t ask me why, he’s a quirky enough character that I’m not going to argue with it.)  Dandill – “Dandy” to people from whom he’s willing to tolerate it – is my tank character.  With the recent buffs to the Blood tree and tanking using it in the 3.0.8 patch, I’m a whole lot happier with how he’s doing these days.  I hadn’t intended his personality to turn out quite the way it did…but I really do like him.  He’s certainly not your average death knight.

As for the kid on the right…that’s Keilos.  Master Blood Knight Keilos Dawnstar, if you’re being absolutely priss-proper about it, which, I assure you, he won’t be.  Kei there has the nickname of “The Brat.”  Namely because he is, but also because for my characters, he is so very painfully young – and it shows.  Kei’s the last one we’ll get to so far as introductions go, because I’m fairly certain that his path is going to change going from level 72 to level 80.

There’s a couple of other characters you’ll also meet here, but I’ll save their general introductions for another post.  Next here will be a more formal RP look at the boys at the top of the page.

Hello world!

Well, this is it.  I finally gave up and started a blogg over here.

The “Doubled Trouble” referred to in the blog’s title are my two blood elves in World of Warcraft, Destril the shadow priest adnd Dandill the death knight.  You may also hear grumblings about a rogue by the name of Phileas Lynch as well.  >.>

 

More coming later.