Icarus's blog: "Augurs, Martyrs, and Agnostics"

What did I want to say?

hmmm...
oh

My hometown hero is coming back for a couple weeks. Err California not HERE here.
His wife is about ready to pop with baby #2. I should
probably
come up with a present to send them.

Hard to shop for babies that have millionaire grandparents though.

Induce day is Monday.

Here's to a safe delivery and catch.

In other news
I'm having some catastrophucks in the basement. I set up my totally sweet greenhouse popup to paint in, and I set up a cleaning/prep station. But... painting beyond that has been a touch difficult.

I think my first problem is just that I'm using a tacky, low quality paint, but I'm convinced my "Fade Ground Gundam" project will not go as planned.

I need to explore some other options at this point, and one of them is sticky-tac masking.
Its a process where you color the item with the stripe color, lay down some thin strips to mask off that color, and then paint over it with the main color
remove the sticky stuff
voila
more than one color/effect.

This is getting into the realms of delicate, and inplausible.

Before I get much further ahead though I'll need to either mix, or purchase a foggy dark color that isn't opaque and test it out for the rest of the build.

Hopes are higher for that portion of the project.

Chewing gum.
Watching Baseball (when Fox doesn't black it out for Cardinals coverage :/)
and drinking beer.

Drinking: IPA. Because I wanted something punchy to "celebrate more work".
Chewing: Some tiny wintergreen thing, because I had onion breath, and I didn't want to overeat.

I've also been working out again >> 10 minutes of kendo/cardio and 10 minutes of crunches has been a good starting point.
I've already lost 5 lbs.
But a couple of these new situps I discovered do WEIRD things to my stomach
it feels like my abdomenal muscles are ballooning for a second, and then rolling around and up into my stomach.

Uhh hope that has nothing to do with an undiagnosed hernia or something.

Feels really damn strange though.

And then I conceptualized some more stuff for my "Sun God Villain guy".

... shut up! I don't have a name worked out for him yet.

I've been thinking about "character motivations" for the last couple months, and when I sat down recently and thought about my sun god for a bit, I think I came up with some stuff that was more interesting, and more horrifying than just "he's god- get used to it".

I don't have a -hard- way to explain his ability (don't know that I need one) but I thought about the characteristics of a semi-super-natural human and how there were usually two sides to every remarkable trait
that's kinda the thing about tragic heroes and whatnot >>
anyway
If he's overdeveloped, and embraced by a sun worshipping society
what traits would have warranted that?

A warm, or searing body.
A radiant, pale complexion.
A need or desire to be in light, or others guessing that you do.
Passion.

What negative things would come with that?
You burn people when you touch them- you're already a paragon, and on top of this, you have a physical condition that further deprives you of human contact.
You would be constantly surrounded by praise, fear, and awe (for better or worse).
Stereotypes suck. "Oh you're a disciple of the divine light, you must LOVE sunbathing!!! So we built you this giant conservatorium!"
What hates, wants, and loves develop in this environment?

So
I'm going to give a young
special boy
Probably a hormonal adolescent
the apparent blessing of a god
the fellowship/worship of an entire civilization
the complete lack of human contact other than awe
possibly his own standing army
everything he could ever think to ask for
deprive him of the things he discovers he wants (like human contact)

and probably throw in some accidental deaths, and rage filled sexual assaults
with scalding incidents.

Why? Why not?

This was always intended to be a dark fantasy.

I'd like to get some horror and hubris in the mix instead of omnipowerful hack-writing.

Besides
what's scarier than
A.) The Sun.
B.) A theocrat with an army of devout followers.
C.) A confused, hurt teenage boy with super powers and super hormones.

... I -might- need to do some research about sexual trauma wait... I can probably draw on some of my own experiences.

Only some though.
It might not ever be an overt, in the book kind of story, and it might just be implied or alluded to rather than a fully narrated scene.
I wouldn't want to go too "Thomas Covenant" on the matter, though I think some parallels on this subject would be unavoidable.

Thus far I've not actually read about how Covenant's victim felt being raped by a man that was delivered to her world to save it.
It wasn't covered in great detail when it happened in the story either.

Maybe it doesn't even have to be an assault, but two kids fumbling around with their first time
and one just so happens to be a demigod with warm to burning body temperature.

Maybe it doesn't have to be something terrible and violent.

But it does have to be tragic.

I think a lot of societies would probably frown on a young woman having sex with their living god.
Makes their god less godly.