The Bookkeeper (Flash Fiction)

(artist unknown) The Poet

The night my grandfather disappeared, the R.B. burned Coraline Library to the ground, and since then, I haven't spoken a word of my own. When I started talking at the age of two, my mother cried in relief because she thought I didn't have the gift.

But she'd been wrong.

I only know this because she wrote it down. Places, faces, images, sounds: they don't stay with me long. There's no room for them there, in among the words. Creak, dunk, thrush, fit. Affable, shrapnel, firebrand, tor. Tickertape snatches of things once thought and recorded, inked on paper, branded, bound, and handed down; they have stamped themselves on the inside of my skull, the permanent impressions of steel typewriter bars going click, click, click.

"I cannot live without books." Thomas Jefferson.

I wish that were so for me, because I can't speak without them. I have a million lines reeling through my head like newspapers dashing through machinery, flashing ink-stained underskirts in the stamping-dance of the printing press. Ah, that paper maiden. Corporeal, no--but constructed of a billion words. She is knowledge and ideas. A literal, lingual muse.

It would be one thing to die without reading a chapter of some non-reality--to be unable to measure your own life's sorrow against the imaginings of what could or might be. Torture, to be certain, for humans are creatures that thrive by measuring and comparing, sharing and communicating--if we can't do this, then we do not know how to live. If we can't find the edges of what we know to be normal, we can't expand and dream beyond. Without information, we do not know how to be human.

Without words, we are powerless.

Which is why my gift is also a curse.

*****

This was originally intended as an opening for a longer piece, which I've decided--for the moment--not to write. I liked the beginning, and I thought it stood on its own as a concept, if not a story.

George Lucas - The Phantom Audience

I've been a Star Wars fan since I was a little girl. In middle school, one of my walls was a collage of posters, pictures, and fan-art, I had a one-foot model of the Millenium Falcon suspended from my ceiling, and enough extended universe books to build a desk.

Recently, George Lucas announced that he was stepping back from making feature films because of the negative reaction he continues to receive from fans about alterations he's made to the Star Wars films. The Guardian cited a NY Times interview with Lucas, in which he said the following:

"On the internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie. I'm saying: 'Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.'" 

"Why would I make any more," Lucas says, "when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

[Insert appropriate joke about going to the Toshi station to pick up power converters here]

After my initial eye-roll, I had two reactions:

1. Lucas, as the creator, has the power to do whatever he wants with his franchise, but should have been prepared for a negative backlash.

2. Lucas's reaction to audience backlash suggests that he views his audience as witnesses rather than collaborators.

As a creator, I find Lucas's reaction both understandable and problematic. I understand the desire to go back, to tweak things and try to make them more like what you see in your head, but once a work has made an impact on society, the time to make changes has passed.

I'm a firm subscriber to the belief that art belongs to the audience, not the creator. It's is going to be true no matter how much the author wants to control, revise, or retract the original work, because experiencing art is personal, and what we come to understand through that experience weaves itself into our ideas of who we are and where we fit into the world. Both parties come out of it changed, having created the experience inside their heads as something meaningful and indicative of self, even if it's as simple as "Anakin is way more annoying than Luke -- I didn't think that was possible".

While a work of art reflects the audience more than the artist, it is also important not to take the artist entirely out of the equation. Art is the product of the ideas and values of the artist, and an audience resonates with the evidence of those ideas and values, even if their interpretations are completely different. Intention has nothing to do with it. They may want to know what the artist "meant", but only because they have already decided what the work means to them, and want to find out how they compare, and where that places them in the scheme of society/morality/the bright center of the universe.

Whether the intention and interpretation turn out to be the same is irrelevant. For example, no matter how many times Tolkein stated that The Lord of the Rings was not meant as a Christian allegory, the audience member who interprets it that way isn't wrong. He sees the parallels in his own minds, and those parallels become part of the meaning of The Lord of the Rings for him, part of his experience. It has somehow strengthened or created pathways of thinking about the world in relation to something that matters to him.

Respect of an audience's reaction is valuable to an artist as well, because it allows her to grow and reevaluate herself. By deciding whether the interpretation of the audience is or isn't what she intended, an artist can create her own meaning and understanding of self through the reaction.

Unfortunately, Lucas didn't get the chance to visit the Vader-cave on Dagobah for a little self-reflection. In a 2004 interview, he said: 

[T]o me, [the original version of the trilogy] doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. 

Whoa. Stop the Bantha.

Deriding fans for falling in love with something you created, even if you see it as incomplete, is rude enough to inspire Force-lightning. If there's anything Lucas should try to take back, it's that. Let's pretend the fans shot first.

To claim that the original version of the trilogy no longer exists is to say that this whole collaborative sub-culture built around the works, and the meanings derived from the experience of it, are invalid. To Lucas, the film may have been "half completed", but it was released to the public - with or without his permission - and millions fell in love.

He often claimed to have been disappointed, and yet something kept him going after A New Hope, and I doubt it was the desire to keep producing "half completed" films.

Image from nakedglitter on tumblr

When John Green wrote Looking for Alaska, I'm sure he was proud of it. Later on, however, he stated that he no longer agreed with what he'd set out to write in that book, particularly because some fans pointed out the unfair treatment of a female character. Rather than going back and making changes, however, Green used that change in philosophy to grow as an artist. He wrote another book -- Paper Towns -- in order to reexamine the parts of Looking for Alaska he no longer agreed with.

And that, in my opinion, is how it should be done.

Once a work of art has moved into the public view, it ceases to belong to the artist because each member of the audience develops his or her own unique version -- it becomes a collaboration. The audience gives the work meaning, rates its significance, and uses it to make more art and more communication and facilitate more development of self. Art doesn't just reflect one or the other, artist or audience -- it's a set of facing mirrors that reflect each other indefinitely.

Rather than treating his audience as collaborators, involved in an ongoing process of development, and allowing the original Star Wars trilogy to remain as it originally was, he treated his audience as witnesses to his inability to move on.

Further reading: Flavorwire's Open Thread on George Lucas.

AND TO PROVE that art inspires collaboration and dialoge and change and art, I've written the following song, using the music of YouTuber gunnarolla, as a tribute to George Lucas.

How Do You Balance Your Life?

How do you choose to spend your time?

My life has six categories of time expenditure:

Work
Health
Writing
Entertainment
Social Life
Sleep

I'm awesome enough to balance all six.

You hated me for about a second, didn't you? OK, stop now. I'm pretty sure it's difficult to balance more than three at once. Maybe that's just me, but let's go with it. The three I've been operating under recently are work, health, and social life. I really want to be writing, but when life gives you best friends' birthdays, you buy cake. And a round of shots. Anyway, the major difference hasn't been two nights of reckless abandon and carousing...

I've recently started back at the gym, and pretty soon, I'll be starting up a fitness podcast with a pair of really awesome guys...but there's one thing I've noticed about trying to get back in shape: it takes up a lot of time. On days when I work out, I've got less than an hour of writing time if I decide to entirely ignore my roommate. I'm not a sprint-writer, so this has been a bit tough on me. I like to binge.

Friday, I have plans in the evening, but my plans on saturday are to crawl back into my cocoon and work on my short story for Pendragon.

Which of the three are you prioritizing at the moment? Which three do you want to prioritize?


photo by patriziasoliani

Hot Mess

The oft-spoken platitude "things always get worse before they get better" is especially apt when it comes to housework and writing.

You know that moment where you look around at your house/bedroom/apartment/etc. and decide you need to rearrange so that everything is more accessible, more organized, and more of a reflection of you? Well, my roommate and I did just that last weekend. Our living room was okay - we'd painted a wall and hung pictures and barn stars, but it just seemed weird to walk into our apartment and not see...books. I mean, she's a librarian and I'm, you know, a writer. Books are sort of what we do.

It would have been awesome if we could just Mary Poppins (<--honorary verb) our apartment, but just like in writing, there's no easy button. Before we could move anything, we had to PULL OUT ALL THE THINGS. By Sunday night, we'd rearranged the living room to our liking: books and knick-knacks and pictures and posters signed by Neil Gaiman and John Green...

...and the rest of the house had descended into chaos. We blamed the cats, and ignored it until Friday, by which point the kitchen...

Anyway, you get the idea. Right now, HELLHOUND is at the same point as my apartment. I've gutted it, chopped it up, and spread out the pieces. I've added characters and cut others, done away with subplots and worked in better ones. But as I fix one part of the story, another part falls off into jumbled, irreparable madness. I've hit that moment where I think everything is as messy as it's going to be, and I just need to figure out where everything goes, and what I need to fix it.

So I'm note-carding again, looking at the characters and subplots, filling up the giveaway box and making room for only what's good and necessary, only what accurately represents the story I want to tell.

Unfortunately, there are no cats to blame for this madness. Fortunately, no one else has to see it until it's ready.

As for the apartment, it's Sunday evening, and things have gotten better. I've rearranged my room, Skrybbi has built her desk, and we've done approximately 5 loads of laundry. The kitchen is no longer a war-zone, and even though my cat knocked a bottle of Kahlua onto the floor at 3AM last night, we're feeling good about how everything is shaping up.

Pendragon Variety Call for Submissions!

The first issue of Pendragon Variety Literary Magazine is scheduled for release in May, and we need YOUR contributions to make it happen! This will release first as the Audio Literary Magazine, and later as an e-book.

The theme for Issue # 1 is "DRAGONS". This issue will be dedicated to the life and memory of Anne McCaffrey, so every story should include dragons in some significant way. Cyber dragons, genetically-engineered dragons, dragon mech-warriors–use your imagination. But they must be pivotal.

Deadline: March 5th

ART:

If you would like to contribute insert art Pendragon Variety Issue #1, please email PendragonVariety@gmail.com with the subject “ART SUBMISSION – Your Name” with relevant links and/or attachments.

FICTION:

Length: 100 – 5,000 words. If you have something longer, please query first – we will consider it.

What we want: From Sci-Fi to Steampunk to Sword and Sorcery, anything speculative! Reprints accepted.

What we don’t want: Anything you would be ashamed to read in front of a random selection of people from a Dragon*Con hotel lobby, including at least one person dressed as Darth Vader.

Format: A properly-formatted .doc or .rtf file

Send it to: PendragonVariety@gmail.com; with “SUBMISSION – Your Title” as the subject header.

We will discuss preferences for audio production after the acceptance of your story. At the moment, we regret that we are unable to pay our authors. If you would like to help us pay our authors, please go to the site and click on the DONATE button.

Two Flash Fictions

So, my friend and fellow writing club member, Elyse, made me write flash fiction stories today. I thought, since I've been caught up in a billion projects recently and haven't had time to write a post, I'd inflict these stories upon you all! They're inspired by randomly-selected song lyrics.

Flash Fiction Piece 1

Xan slid through the dingy crowd packed between the facades of every shop on main street, carefully keeping his face covered by the high collar of his coat. The curious, milling crowd was little more than a forest of feet. Some were shod, others not, but they all scuffed over the mud-veined cobbles, trouser hems and petticoats sucking up the muck as the people in them sucked up the lies of the Benefactor.

Xan had had enough of lies, and his answer to them was in a single word, burning in his mind, on his tongue, from his pen.

Revolution.

It had taken only one word, whispered in the dark of gas-lamps, coded into the articles he wrote to extoll the Benefactor's virtue, to amass an army of bodies. It would take many thousand more to convince them to fight.

Xan made his way to the monument of the City Benefactor and took the watch from his pocket. The chain spilled out in a silky tumble of delicate gold links, tugging lightly on the clip in his waistcoat. He clicked it open, glanced at its backwards-ticking hands, and checked it against the enormous clock-tower casting a knife of shadow over the courtyard. The hands would match up in less than a minute.

The journalist lifted his head then, eyes scanning the crowd he would soon arm with the greatest weapons: words.

(I am an arms dealer/ Fitting you with weapons in the form of words.)

Flash Fiction Piece 2

The fool’s voice was a low, grating crumble of a sound, like the earth around a gravestone. The throne room was cold, soundless but for the minor lullaby he hummed under his breath. The planks were smooth on his bare feet--worn soft as velvet by the many feet dragged to and fro across them every day.

“At your pleasure, my liege,” he mocked, bowing to the throne he knew was empty. “Shall I slit his throat, my liege? Burn his family before his eyes till he begs for blinding, my liege?” He cackled, raising two spidery, knuckley hands to his own face--to the hollow sockets--and prying wide the gaps in his face, tipping forward as though staring at some tortured soul.

He cackled, danced forward with steps too practiced to need counting, and leapt onto the dais, collapsing lazily across the throne. “The king of fools sayeth…” He turned his head, slow as an owl, and stared sightlessly.

“Give him riches, ten stones in measure, and chuck him in the moat.”

(Are you blind when you’re born? Can you see in the dark? / Dare you look at a king? Would you sit on his throne?)

Specific Motivation for Characters

You may be surprised at the changes...

While doing the outlining workshop, a few of the folks tried to pass off "to be happy" as a character motivation. Sorry, folks - no dice.

It's not that "to be happy" isn't a motivation, but it's sort of the quintessential motivation, and that's the problem. When you're setting up what your character wants, it needs to be as specific as possible, because that specificity will help your character seem unique.

"To be happy" is not unique. Just like we can trace all life back to the sun (well, as far as I know), everyone is motivated by the pursuit of happiness. Does your villain want to destroy the world? Why? Because on some level, world-destruction makes that character happy, or at least satisfied.

And satisfied is like happy. For sociopaths.

Anyway.

Motivation needs to be specific, and if it's not, all the cool shit they can do doesn't matter, because we don't know why it's important. A while back, I saw a youtube video about how Disney princesses always have their "motivation establishing song." I can't find that video now, but here are some of the relevant songs:

Belle: I want adventure in the great wide somewhere...

Ariel: I want to be where the people are...

Mulan: When will my reflection show who I am inside...

Snow White: Someday my prince will come...(barf.)

Ignoring the gag-inducing passivity of the Snow White motivation (If you haven't read the "YA Cover Trends" [aka, Dead Girls on Covers] essays over on Rachel Stark's blog, Trac Changes, I command thee go read.)  you can see that all four of these chicks at least know what they want, and we learn that before they have to start fighting to make it happen or, in Snow White's case, before she is rudely taken advantage of by her step mother, and then randomly sexually assaulted by some chump with a white horse and a crown, and then circumstances allow everyone else to make her dream happen.

But how does one go about figuring out a specific motivation for a character?

The way I've decided to define specific motivation is by breaking it down into two parts:

DESIRE + METHOD

Desire is whatever it is your character wants. This should be the thing that pulls them toward the ending, the thing that they want to fight for. For example, the two main characters of HELLHOUND:

Helena: to gain true freedom and peace for herself and her pack.

Jaesung: to take care of the people he cares about (the way his father didn't).

Method is the course of action your character plans, must, or eventually decides to take in order to achieve their goals. To know this, you must know first what is keeping them from achieving their desires. Again, I'm going to use the cast of HELLHOUND as an example.

What stands between desire and:

Helena: Gwydhain is hunting the Hellhounds, the Sorcerers Guild is hunting her, and Jaesung's attention/suspicion puts her in danger of revealing her secret. 

Jaesung: Helena won't tell him what's going on, so he can't protect her from it. He's still in school and doesn't make enough money yet to help resolve his father's debt.

So, what's their course of action, given these obstacles?

Helena: protect the book with the Hellhound creation spell, learn enough magic to defeat Gwydhain, keep her autonomy from the Sorcerers Guild, and keep her true nature hidden from her roommates. 

Jaesung: find out what's going on with Helena so he can support her...and to make sure she's not endangering anyone else he cares about; finish his degree in applied mathematics and get a good job so he can take care of his family financially.

From these pieces of information, we can decide what each character's specific motivation is. For now, I'm just going to pick the most important obstacle.

THIS IS WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE

Helena: wants to gain true freedom and peace for herself and her pack BY protecting the book with the Hellhound creation spell and learning enough Magic to defeat Gwydhain. 

Jaesung: wants to take care of the people he cares about (the way his father didn't) BY finding out what's going on with Helena so he can support her, or at least make sure she's not endangering anyone else.

CHARACTER wants to achieve DESIRE by taking a COURSE OF ACTION.

I don't think your characters' initial courses of action need to be successful - Helena fails both to protect the book and to learn enough Magic to defeat Gwydhain, and so must come up with an alternate solution. I'm not going to tell you if Jaesung is successful or not. You'll just have to wait and see...

What is your main character's specific motivation? Is their initial course of action successful? What's their next course of action?

Why Flaws and Motivations Matter More

What's that? I can't hear you over my AWESOME!

Have you ever created a character so sublimely kickass you can't believe they somehow rocketed straight from your subconscious?

He's a white-haired elf who doesn't realize he's a half-demon, and comes back to save the undeserving village that ran him off, only to die a slow and painful death (with an epic death-speech that would make Mercutio weep in a fit of jealous awe) to teach us all a lesson in tolerance. Speaking of tolerance, he's gay! With a demon. Isn't he awesome?

No. He's not. Maybe the above description intrigues you, and that's not a bad thing. Most likely, you're rolling your eyes. How do I know? Because I haven't given you a reason to care. It isn't that there's anything wrong with being a soliloquizing half-elf-half-demon still fighting to protect the ones that would have him killed (and getting some action on the side), but as it stands he's boring.

Here's the deal: anyone can heap awesome skills and powers onto a character. Anyone can throw a sad back-story and a tragic ending at a character. Anyone can give their character a controversial trait. (May I add, here, that making a character gay is not a quirk, flaw, or free-pass on making your character unique?) I can't embolden, underline, italicize, and capitalize the following enough: NONE OF THIS MATTERS WITHOUT FLAWS OR MOTIVATION.

Stories aren't about how awesome a character is. It's about the problems--internal and external--those characters overcome, and why they overcome them. Sure, how they overcome those problems is an important aspect of the plot, but it's in the "why" that we readers find a reason to care.

Looking for even more tips on writing? Go check out freelance editor CA Marshall's blog for her special Editing Advent contest - you could win a free 10 page critique from someone who knows what she's talking about.

Writing Romance - What About MY Needs!?

Writing Podcasts seem to have a certain synchronicity for me--when I'm struggling with something in my own writing, I hear it discussed in a podcast soon thereafter. It's not even that I seek out the episodes so much as I work my way though them, and the episode I need just happens to be there. That's happened to me with all three of my favorite writing podcasts: The Dead Robots Society, I Should Be Writing, and Writing Excuses. That's what I hope my own podcast, Pendragon Variety, can do for other aspiring writers.

 The other day, I was listening to the Writing Excuses podcast, and heard something that seemed like common sense, but which I sometimes lose track of when writing romance between two characters. I'm not talking about romance novels (not that there's anything wrong with them). I'm talking about every romance you write, and what keeps it from feeling forced--what draws your characters to each other, by proxy drawing your readers to the relationship: knowing the needs the two characters satisfy for each other.

 In "The Mark of Flight", Shiro and Arianna were pretty simple to figure out. Shiro fills Arianna's need to be seen, appreciated, and loved for who she is and not because she's a princess. Arianna fills Shiro's need to be believed in, and his need to be valued as a person. Funny enough, they satisfy a very similar needs for each other, though they come from completely different backgrounds. Their romance was never really an issue for me, so when I started writing HELLHOUND, I imagined everything would fall perfectly into place.

 Not so. Part of this was my fault in writing without any idea who my characters were, what motivated them, or what they even wanted. But I feel like I should have figured it out by the end of the first draft. Something wasn't quite working--it was totally unbalanced. They went from 0 to 40...then back to 10...then to 80...and then piddled along to the end. It's not because they're not both likable, interesting, developed characters. It's not because there wasn't plenty of attraction on both sides.

I knew that Jaesung was a good influence on Helena...but I couldn't quite figure out what it was about HER that made him stick around. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about when I say that, sometimes, I don't think one protagonist quite has as much to offer as the other. "Because he loves her" might be valid, but sometimes I still want a little more.

What does Bella have to offer Edward (besides the feeling that he's a horrible monster for wanting to eat her all the time)?

What does Ron give to Hermione (besides at least three reasons to cry in every book)?

What is it about Clary that makes Jace willing to brave even the possibility of incest for her? (*squick*)

 Jaesung gives me that problem. When you're a 23-year-old grad student juggling lots of goslings, what's going to draw you to a girl whose most likely background is "drug mule in witness protection"? Okay. Her hot legs. At first. But when shit starts going down, there's got to be something more.

Helena tries to do everything herself. She truly believes she has something that only she can do, and that she's got to do it alone. Unfortunately, her character flaw is in her inability to look past the moment and see consequences. Because she's too afraid to think about a future she thinks is hopeless, she gets herself into a lot of trouble for making decisions that don't seem to have any foresight.

Jaesung, on the other hand, has effectively killed his ability to live in the moment by always thinking about the past, and trying to figure out how to avoid making the same mistakes as his father. He works hard at something at which he's rather mediocre to make sure he can support his mother and his future family, while relegating his passions into the "hobby" box. Of course, he enjoys them...but he's not the type of person who can let himself disappoint people.

Helena never thinks about the future. Jaesung always does. This causes tension in their relationship, to be sure, but it also gives each of them something to contribute to the other. In a way, their flaws when it comes to life in general become their strengths for each other. Helena's lack of foresight gives Jaesung the opportunity to help her find her "light at the end of the tunnel" (Oh hai, theme). Her recklessness forces him to admit what he truly cares about, whether that lets people down or not.

Because I think flaws are so important, I have to make sure they grow, but don't fix each other, because the story isn't about overcoming flaws. Like many good stories, it's about overcoming adversity despite a thousand things that are in the way, including those flaws. Helena will probably never be able to plan ahead the way Jaesung does, and I know he will always feel duty-bound to take care of everyone around him.

She'll drag him out to play in the snow at 4AM. He'll remember anniversaries. She'll remind him to take a break from doing taxes. He'll make sure they get done later. She'll hunt demons for the safety of the world. He'll make sure she doesn't do it alone.

Yeah. They're a good match.

The Four Temperaments (for You and Your Characters) - Part II - Sensing/Perceiving

Last week, I discussed how to use the sensing and intuitive distinction in characters in description and exposition. As I mentioned in that post, the largest division of temperament occurs in the method of gathering and processing information (Keirsey). The next division is within the sensing and intuitive types.

This next bit goes into the background of the distinctions, so if you’re just interested in the behavior of the SP temperament types, skip everything between the camels.

In Please Understand Me, Keirsey describes the reasoning behind the division:

The Ns...opt either for...spirituality (self actualization) or...science (powers). ... The Ss...choose either...joy (freedom to act) or...duty (social status). ...[F]eeling now distinguishes the...self-actualization motive from the thinking...power motive. ...[J]udgement (J) distinguishes the...duty motive from the...freedom motive (P).

 

Because intuitive (N) types experience the world in a more metaphysical way, it makes sense for the distinction to rest on whether they are thinking or feeling types, or--as Keirsey states--whether they persue self-actualization or powers (which he defines as knowledge or skills). This gives us two of the four temperaments:

NF & NT

There seems to be some disagreement over how the distinctions are made when it comes to the sensing types. In the first post in this series, there was a graphic that split up both Intuitive and Sensing types by whether they’re thinking or feeling. Considering the sensing types are mostly concerned with the facts, the experience, and the present it makes more sense to me to distinguish Sensing types based on their need (or lack of need) to make conclusions and create deadlines, or the pursuit of duty versus the pursuit of freedom.

So for the purpose of this blog series, I’m going to be using Keirsey’s distinction. Thus, the sensing temperaments are:

SP & SJ

Temperament of the Day

SP
(Sensing / Perceiving)

Dionysian

 (Joy/Aesthetic)

Dionysus riding a leopard.
Like a boss.

Sensing/Perceiving types are best embodied by the idea of the free-roller. Dionysus, the Greek God of wine and general debauchery, is a great example of the independent, fun-seeking SP.

They are independent, and rather than a work ethic, these types have a play ethic.They are optimists with a strong belief in and desire for equality. SPs are impulsive, and like being impulsive. They are the heart-breakers, the epicurians, and the easily bored.

SPs don't tend to pursue goals. They may have them, but the goal itself tends to be arbitrary. They run because they feel like running, not because they want to reach a finish line. This often means they have an inexhaustable endurance in comparison to more goal-driven types, because SPs aren't looking for a finish-line. It's all about the experience. As soon as the experience stops being fun, the SP can cast aside the goal like a banana peel (which also sometimes leaves the people around them in...slippery situations).

SPs go along with rules and regulations until a crisis strikes, or until they feel their autonomy is being challenged, at which point they break for the exit like Kim Kardashian in a wedding dress.

Despite their flaws, SPs are generally well-liked for their optimism, sponteneity, and the sense of adventure they bring to every day life.

Some Suspiciously SP Characters in Fiction Are:

• Falstaff (Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor)
• Sirius Black (Harry Potter)
• Ron Weasley (Harry Potter)
• Howl/Howell (Howl's Moving Castle)
• Menolly (Harper Hall Trilogy)