Old Writings

[teleidoplex]

About a decade ago now, the Fox ran a tabletop Changeling game for a small group of us. This was before Tale of Winter, though some of the threads from that early game ran through the larp.

My character, Bryn, was a troll knight who ended up swearing service to (and falling in love with, in the chivalric sense) a knocker inventor/clubber named Violet. Violet was an NPC played by the Fox. She had a whole purple and black industrial goth thing going on, and she was wicked hot! She was the girlfriend/prisoner of a redcap named Mortag the Red, and he was a pretty nasty piece of work. He pretty much just kept her around to make weapons and munitions for his gang.

I woke up one night after a gaming session and wrote this sonnet in a fit of inspired, frenetic passion. Recently, the topic of sonnets has come up on WoW, and it sent me to search out this piece. I think it's rather good for being something I wrote ten years ago.


Violet
What fairest beauties pierce mine eye,
With flashing looks and floating hair,
Can contest thy beauty's symmetry,
Or with thine wisdom doth compare?
Thou'rt fair as black-winged night.
Bright Luna in thy features dwells,
My heart, my soul, mine eye's delight,
Sweet Lady of the urban dells.
Nature's whim hath made thee wild,
Her purple wine thy lips doth stain,
And many a heart hast thou beguiled,
Yet all who love thee love in vain,
For one has chained the wild-grown flower,
Who feels no love, but lusts for power.

--by Dame Bryn Copeland, in service to the Lady Violet

Comments

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

:)

Funny how characters can take over, isn't it?

Beautiful sonnet too.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

o_O

I don't think you ever told me about that character . . . .

[teleidoplex]

Heh. I think I must have at some point, because that was the game that spawned Darien Black (remember the Berach the Redcap and the Nocker that Darien hung out with in Ireland? The Nocker was Violet and the redcap was one of the other PC's from the Jordan game, shamelessly borrowed for the Ireland game).

And Bryn seemed a very good Troll name, cause... y'know... mountain! Most of the time she went by Brianne, which was her mortal name. She had problems with the mists because strong women meet with a lot of banality and discouragement in their day-to-day lives. That was also my explanation for the dearth of female trolls. Most of them couldn't survive the changeling way because society's expectations and approved roles for women meant that they never chrysalized.

I'm almost certain we talked about that issue at one point?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I remember Darien, and now that you connected Violet, I remember her too (or more to the point, Ree debating whether carrying around a nocker-built sawed-off shotgun wasn't a quick route to a new incarnation). Berach I forgot, though.

You probably did mention the troll to me. Maybe I just erased her from my memory because of cognitive dissonance. It's weird to see my name used to refer to someone Not Me.

I don't think you ever brought up the issue of female trolls, but it's a very interesting one. Ree managed through various incarnations because, as an eshu, she gravitated toward being on the fringe of society anyway, but trolls are almost inherently meant to be bound into the system, and the historical opportunities for that kind of woman were indeed limited. (I can think of some, so long as you don't expect them to be active warriors -- wives who commanded castles during seiges, etc -- but not common, no.)

Then again, Ree kept kicking the bucket before her twenty-fifth birthday anyway, so it isn't like she was a poster child for how to make the Strong Woman thing work.