Anyway, yeah. The point of this thread is to tell me what you would do in the given situations so I can have a better understanding of how to write Beth-Meredith. If you don't want to read the entire thing, that's fine. I write (and talk) a lot. Most of it's irrelevent to what I was saying before. Feel free to discuss whatever floats your boat.
(That last sentence... so chalk-full of cliches... burning_eyes )
Imagine you're a 14/15-year-old girl. Your parents are divorced and you live with a frugal, kinda-rich father in a cheap apartment. You're into all the mainstream stuff and WOULD have been one of those yappy witches, if it weren't for your two best buds who are definitely not part of the popular crowd and don't care. You yourself are kinda popular. You don't smoke, but you've tried marijuana and think it's not that great to get hooked on - just special occasions. No boyfriend at the time.
One Sunday evening, you go grocery shopping with your dad and when you get back he says he forgot a bag in the back seat, so you go to get it. When you lean over the front seat to get it you're suddenly thrown/pushed into the back and the door closes, and the car is screaming down the road, making others honk as it swerves in front and making people shout as they're run off the sidewalk. Whoever is driving is laughing (sounds male, young adult), and you think they're laughing at your fear as you look and see that there's no one in the front seat. Then you realize that you're lying in the front seat and the car was never jacked, so you assume you must have fallen asleep, which is really weird in itself. When you get the bag and start heading in, the hair on your neck stands up and you, for no apparent reason, look up. You don't tell anyone about this.
The next day you meet a new girl who seems really nice and appears to really want to be your friend. She follows you everywhere you go. That night you have a dream. It's really vague, but you're terrified out of your wits and you hear that laughing again. You catch glimpses of whoever/whatever it is, and it's like a human crossed with that bat from Ferngully. That day you tell your best friends about it, they just shrug and don't think about it any more. The new girl seems really interested in it and pays more attention to you.
A couple days later you're walking downtown after sunset to a theatre with your best friends and the new girl, on a sidewalk opposite a big, old trainstation. The new girl stops and swiftly looks up, like you did after the grocery-thing. She yells to get down, and tackles you. People scream, and you realize that one of your friends is missing and that thing is laughing. You look up and see a monster, humanoid with arms that are like bird wings, but with bat membranes stretched between instead of feathers. It's got a rat-like tail that it holds like a raptor, and seems to have leathery black natural armour on it's thighs and chest. It has feet shaped like a bird's and clawed like a bird's, but leathery and hand-like, like a monkey's. It's face seems human at first but is wrinkled all wrong, like a bat's, and it's eyes are black.
You see this in a flash as it swoops back into the air. Something about the grip your new friend has on your arm makes you look at her. She seems to have forgotten about you, but that's not what scares you. Her skin has turned a distinct light blue, speckled a little darker blue (I guess like a watercolour salamander?) and her face looks more like a wolf's or reptile's or rat's... It just isn't human and has stretched out into a snout. She still looks mostly humanoid, but she has wings on her back (not wing-arms like the orange-brown-black creature's) and a similar rat-like, raptor-held tail. Your new friend that you are not so sure of anymore flies into the air and is joined by two other similar light blue creatures.
(If you didn't think I was weird enough at this point, I happen to be watching a movie on UFO's with Dan Akroyd talking some. It's really interesting. It's not like that crappy DVD someone got me about aliens, it's actually well-researched and has really good footage. Carrying on with my demented plot...)
You realize now, if you didn't before, that the creature has a human-level intelligence and is quite very likely a sadist. This is proved by the apparent humour he/it gets from dropping your friend and catching her at the last second, playing with her like a cat does with... grasshoppers, birds, mice, squeaky toys... Pretty much anything. He's also playing with the three blue creatures that are trying - apparently desperately - to stop him. They do so with such projectiles as blades conjured from the air and fire. (Two use fire, the other uses blades) So far they aren't succeeding and the monster is having great fun.
He throws your friend again, but while she's in midair he gets hit by a glob of fire and is thrown off balance. She crashes into a bunch of boxes near the train station. The monster regains his composure, but instead of recovering its prey, it turns to you and dives. He has a serious kind of look as he snatches you in those bird-monkey feet and climbs back into the air.
I'm gonna put a little Situation #1 tag here, so that after I add more of the story I got in my headmeats people can still comment about what they'd do here. I know it seems like the obvious thing is to be all "OFMG AAAAAAAAAAAHH!" but just tell me anything that comes into your head. What do you think my protagonist should be thinking, or feeling, or screaming?
There is a brief aerial battle between the monster and the creatures, one of whom you thought you knew. The monster is intent on leaving, but the creatures won't let him get beyond the train station's parking lot. It isn't so much of a battle, as it is just trying to avoid the flaming projectiles. Though he's only been hit once (the fireball that made him drop your friend), it isn't easy. The monster's back gets sliced by a thrown blade, and he cries out in pain; the hindclaws around your shoulders and chest spasm and let go. You're in free-fall for a fraction of a second, before you grab its tail to save yourself, which is kinda ironic.
The monster appreciated this irony and laughs again. You look up and see it grinning at you, before gripping you firmly with those monkeybird feet and setting off again. Its humour quickly wears off as it almost clears the treetops of the park, but turns the wrong way to dodge a missile and is barreled full in the chest by one of the blue people. He drops you again, but this time you can't recover yourself; luckily (Or un-so?) you're caught by a second blue creature and swiftly flown into the big, old trainstation, and set on the ground.
When you stand up, you notice that there are no people in the building, aside from yourself, your other friend, and two of the blue things. Now that you think of it, after you were snatched by the bat-thing, there were no people outside, either. No cars. Which is really weird for a busy train station in the city. The third creature flies in, and they revert (Or disguise themselves?) to human forms.
Another Situation Tag here. This one is number Two. (Wow!) Somewhere here, the creatures tell you that the monster can most closely be called a vampire, though it is a false representation, he's more like a demon. They say he's going to kill you, but is only playing with you like a cat with its prey before presenting you to its master (who they insinuate is Satan or the devil, just not in those terms). Also somewhere here, most likely before they begin explaining, you ask where your friend is. They say they put her to sleep in a safe place, but you don't know if you can trust these things.
For any of the following, you can refer to as 2.5
For any of the following, you can refer to as 2.5
As you talk to them, they reassure you that they are on your side. You notice that things around you are beginning to grow less distinct, and they start to explain that the monster outside has the power to influence the mind; he's trying to plunge them into a never-waking nightmare world. They tell you that they'll keep the 'fog' away, but they have to go outside now to finish him; he can't get in himself, because they sealed the doors, windows, and other entrances to the train station.
While listening to them, you catch movement behind them, and already you can hear things you thought you had forgotten, things you dreamed about when you were very little and sent you screaming to your parents' room (when they were still together). You look closer, and you see that thing's face coming towards you. It's the monster, but he's human, like the blue things. You're unsure of whether he's a mirage of the nightmare, but then the blue girls turn around and shriek.
He lunges and knocks the two between him and you down. He jumps again, changing swiftly from human to monster, and he's got your shoulders in his hind claws at the arc of the jump. His wings hadn't had time to fill, yet, so he falls, saumersaults on the ground (with you being swung in the air, still in his claws) and is airborne, your feet just clearing the ground as you fall in the momentum of its roll. The monster flies upwards and swerves, and the third blue creature leaps him, her own wings pumping off the ground, but he keeps going through the nondescript mist and right through a huge hole in the wall.
He's outside, flying for the night sky above the forested park as fast as he can, and the three blue creatures are out the hole far behind him. You have a good view of the trainstation, facing backwards, and somehow things are getting farther away than they should be, hazier with the kilometres but there's no wind, and nothing's moving. You feel somewhat cold inside, and scared for no reason (other than the obvious).
The monster backwashes his wings, and a stone bridge rushes out beneath you like a landing strip. The bridge, behind the monster and in front of you, goes off into a physical black nothing, though how you got here is very muddled and confusing. He drops you on the ground, and keeps going to land himself. You stare at the blackness all around you, not yet turning to see where you are. It's the dark that attracts your attention right now.
You're scared of it, but you don't know why. You do know why. It's pulling at you. You want to go to it, go in it, past it. It's not an instinct, and you know that it's not good. You're scared of this irrational want, because you somehow know that if you go to the dark you'll cease to exist. It's a void. How can anything exist in nothing?
Shivering, you ignore it, and turn around to run. You forgot about the monster, which makes you stop. But he's not there; he's actually farther down the bridge to nowhere, standing at two large, oak doors, set into the wall of a large castle-like structure. It bothers your eyes to look at the farther towers of the castle, like trying to look at those blue LED lights, or to look at a house ten miles away in Saskatchewan.
The monster, now a man (a very tall man, with red crazy hair), continues to stand at the doors. He's looking at you. You can tell that he's trying to be patient, but if you continue to stand there like an idiot he's probably going to do something very unpleasant. You imagine falling off the bridge into the nothing-dark... then, after a moment, you begin to walk tentatively towards the doors.
As soon as he sees you coming, he opens a door and goes inside. You enter behind him, wondering what the hell you're doing. He turns and faces you, standing in the middle of the big decorated foyer, complete with sweeping staircases, chandalier, and rug. He grins at you, and begins to talk for the first time (if you don't include sadistic laughter).
(Here I forgot to describe him. He kinda looks like how Johnny Depp dressed in Sleepy Hollow, with red hair that reminds you of that stupid fruitbat from Ferngully. His face is no longer wrinkled and puffed all wrong like a bat's, it's completely human, except for his eyes, which are still black, shiny ovals. Now that you see his clothes, you remember that in his monster form the leathery armour on his chest kinda looked like that shirt, except as a vest, because his arms were wings... Yay confusing!)
He tells you about how you're safe now, for the moment. Apparently this whole castle exists only in his mind; it's a sanctuary the witches can't get at. You're confused, so he explains, taking amusement in his condescension towards you. He used to be a human, unlike the witches. He was the son of an aristocrat, some 200+ years ago. There are many people with the same power as he, but most never realize it. He smiles (or bare his teeth?) at you when you get even more confused.
He guesses at what the three blue creatures have told you, and then tells you they lied. The creatures, witches he calls them (but also admits it's not the proper word), are kind of like the three priestesses of a doomsday cult, in that they are powerful in magic and are trying to bring about the end of the world. But to do it, they need someone with the power.
It's the power of imagination. He didn't know it, but every time he imagined something, he was either creating a new world, or visiting it. One time, he visited a world of immortals, where he met the witches. They tried to capture him, but he just shrugged it off and went back to studying.
They followed him, and did catch him. As he was held by them, they demanded that he send them to a world of transience, where they can finally rest. But he can't. He just isn't skilled enough, yet, and is also hampered by the belief that what they ask is impossible. After a while, the witches decide that it would just be easier to end this world. All they need is a solar eclipse, and his cooperation.
But with his new knowledge, he unlocked his power and escaped. He discovered he was a shaper of reality. He made his body stronger than theirs, faster, and borrowed some of their design (hence the similarity in wings and tail). For a while they chased him, but when they missed a solar eclipse, they decided it would be easier to find someone else.
And he's been thwarting them since. Once a month, every twenty-eight days when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth, he saves the lives of everyone on this world. Not because of any noble duty, mind you, he just doesn't feel like dying just yet. With his imagination, he's effectively immortal, like the witches, but not invincible.
Your mind reels with the idea that you owe your life to this monster. Everybody does. For two hundred years, every month, stopping the end of the world? It's crazy. But here you stand in a place that exists only in his mind. You're hit with an irrelevent, mind-spinning idea. If he's in his mind, where is he? His body? Is it lying unconscious in the park? Or is it in his mind, within his mind, inside that mind...
He grins at you again. You really don't like that grin. He tells you that you're one of the only people he hasn't had to kill yet. Just about every other time, he's had to (or wanted to?) kill the Vortex before the witches could get him or her. There's only been a handful of people who he's been able to save. He usually let them go after the solar eclipse was over, in which case they were no longer the strongest Vortex and useless to the witches. He lets you imagine what he did to the ones he didn't let go.
He goes on to explain what he had done to make sure you were the current Vortex. He paid an unusual amount of attention to you, scaring you, acting as though you were just going to be another victim, scaring you. His plan worked, and the witches (immortal and strong in magic, though predictable) also paid attention. They even went so far as to send a guard, which meant that you were probably the one they were looking for. So he made his move by trying to capture you before the witches decided that you really were the current Vortex. If he failed, he would have killed you and started hunting for the next one.
So now you wonder at these powers he claims you to have. Powers to shape worlds. Just by imagining it. But then he crushes your sudden Mary-Sue urges, by telling you that you're quite impotent after years of TV and media brainwashing. Though that won't stop the witches from forcing you to end the world, they have ways of breaking down the barriers of the mind, once they get their claws on you.
Here is a Situation Tag, number Three. At this point, you think of everything you've just gone through in the last few days. First, the hallucination of being kidnapped by an invisible carjacker, then the dream of monsters. After that, the mysterious new friend who turns out to be a magical blue creature, a witch, and the whole incident at the train station. Then you think of the opposing stories. The blue creatures are your salvation from this demonspawn. The monster has been the saviour of the world every month for two hundred years from the sorceresses. What can you believe?
The man - or monster - leaves, so that he can begin tracking the Vortex for next month. Leaving you to wander about the castle for two days (the solar eclipse is in three). The hallways are confusing and never stay the same. You explore for the first little while, and then get bored, so you think of things and ask yourself questions (example, Why doesn't he send the witches away now, if he is so powerful?) and come to your own conclusions. (They'll be answered, or insinuated to be answered, in the story. Feel free to ask questions to be included.)
On the night of the second day (The rooms have no apparent fixed location, so it's easy to find the ones with necessities like food in them)
(NOT FINISHED)
All right. I'll add more after I get some suggestions, so that your answers aren't tainted by foreknowledge. Just a note: The protagonist (Who I'm thinking of naming Beth-Meredith, if no one has anything better) is NOT going to be a Mary-Sue. Sure, she has an angsty domestic life. Sure, she's a young teenager, thus more angsty. Sure, she'll turn out (allegedly) to have a power that can destroy the world. BUT. She OVER-angsts about her home life and realizes this later, after things calm down a bit. (Relatively.) She also realizes that she's kinda immature, as is shown by the 'monster's' condecension(?) towards her later. As for her power, she's completely impotent. She DID have the potential, at once point, but her imagination was stifled and stunted by years of TV and media brainwashing. The "monster" isn't a Gary Stu, either. Here's a bit of a spoiler, but he tells Beth his side of the story, which is that he's saving the world from those three 'witches' monthly (The witches say that he's a demon playing with his prey like a cat before killing it and presenting it to his master). However, he's not a hero. His quest to keep the world safe is not noble. It's completely selfish. He just doesn't want to die yet. Also, he is a sadist (Not going out and flaying people kind of sadist, but an enjoyment in other's pain [accidental or purposeful], fear, and irony kind of sadist).
If you actually took the time to read all this, here are the things I'd like you to post:
Your thoughts
What needs improving
Suggestions for Beth's reactions, or names for her friends or other people not mentioned.
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