Writing meme day 28

[erastes]

28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there's nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.

Well I already spoke about Adam Heyward in Hard & Fast – he has a club foot – and I don’t have anyone with any other physical disabilities. It’s odd, really, because I’m sure there would be lots of men coming back from the war with bits missing. That’s something I’ll explore at some point, I’m sure.

However I do have a few characters who are a picnic short of a picnic if you get my meaning. Michael Giddings from Transgressions, Tomas Quinn, Alvisi AND Mauvaise from Standish, and I have another one major loony coming up that I can’t talk about as it will spoil the plot… I like writing about men with psychological problems. I think it started with Lucius Malfoy – when I first started  out in fandom most people (that I encountered, I’m sure there were many better renditions around) were writing Lucius as some kind of 2dimensional monster. Partly, I think because JKR didn’t flesh him out—all you saw was this guy who was rich as Creosote getting involved in the machinations of the day.  Most Luciuses I read were made gibbering sadists who liked nothing better than to capture Harry Potter and chain him up in the dungeon and torture him and shag him.

My Lucius would just chain him up. Preferably in someone else’s basement and just forget about the little toad. I don’t think Malfoy is a gibbering madman, or a sadist. He’s clever and manipulative and ambitious. He (like Giddings) thinks that he’s doing things for the best – and if he happens to enjoy it too, that’s a bonus. Wizards ARE more evolved than Muggles, so naturally he thinks they should be in charge.  he doesn’t want to kill all the Muggles like that lunatic Voldemort – who would grow food? Build things? Do the manual crud? Lucius’ problems were nuture-induced too, my Lucius, that is. An abusive father which he tries hard not to emulate, hence the spoiling (in his mind) of Draco.

In MUFFLED DRUM (thanks Gehayi for spotting my typo) I have one character suffering from amnesia, and that’s been interesting to research, as the character is having difficulty remembering facts from now and that resonates pretty highly with looking after dad, who can’t keep anything in his head for more than a minute or two. His mind currently is playing tricks on him which is leaving him really frightened and disorientated.

Comments

[raevgray.livejournal.com]

My version of Lucius ended up slowly translating into my nasty sadist character(s), too. I always liked him, especially after seeing Jason Isaacs play him.

[raevgray.livejournal.com]

And in my mind, Lucius was always just as brilliant as Snape, in a more political way.

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

It would have been a much fuller & more interesting series had Lucius been more fleshed out & actually *used* properly as a character. I used to love writing the Malfoys though the only thing I remember finishing was about young!Lucius :-)