25. Do any of your characters have pets?
Yes, but in reviewing which characters had what I realized that there aren't very many characters who have pets. I can really only think of four off the top of my head who do: Peri from the Berryverse, Mordecai from the Curseiverse, and Balthazar and Ketlan from the Destiverse.
Peri has the most pets by far of any other character, although her sisters share the cats (but they're really hers). She has a fish tank outside her room (so I guess they belong to all the sisters too) with about 15 fish of various types and colors. Her favorite fish is an orange and white koi named Shu. She also has two cats - Princess Petal (a black cat with a white flower-shaped patch of fur on her back), and Smokey Joe (a Russian Blue), and two hamsters - Ham-Ham and Tumblin' Ted (both have brown fur, but one is a little lighter then the other color wise). She would have more pets if she could, but Atlanta put a stop to adding any more to the menagerie after the hamsters.
In one scene from Episode 7 of The Curse (one of the scenes not filmed unfortunately) Mordecai reveals that he has two cats - Artemis and Ares, and mentions that he had pets in the past before he died (a thousand years ago), he doesn't say what they were but I'm assuming they were cats -- and since I'm the writer I guess I can make that call. So yes, he likes cats. I haven't decided what his current cats look like but I'm leaning towards Artemis being a Russian Blue (i love russian blues and it really fits with the artemis name), and Ares being a big brown tiger stripped cat.
Balthazar has ended up with a pet (never would have pegged him for the pet type). It's a strange looking bird called an Igomene only found on one magical island in the world. They are very rare and very shy. But if an Igomene takes a liking to someone it's a bond that is formed for life and the Igomene will follow that person for the rest of its life. What makes an Igomene rare and special is that it has the ability to change the colors of its feathers to match whatever is around it -- like a chamelian. It also has the ability to carry messages hidden inside it's long tankard-shaped beak, and if the owner cultivates the relationship and actively makes it as strong as possible then the owner and bird can form a sort of telepathic link. They are highly prized as spy birds obviously, but very few people can ever establish the kind of connection with one that it would take to be able to use all of its abilities. Of course Balthazar has and ironically his best friend really is a bird brain. His igomene is a female named Qaolkir (pronouced Kall-keer) which is a Tarqian name meaning "gift of the gods". Balthazar tends to just call her by her nickname Kiri.
Ketlan currently has two pets that I may take away. I'm not sure if I want to keep them or not because they're a bit of a plot-device/deus ex-machina, but they're funny and cute so I want to keep them. It would take too long to explain how it happens, but Ketlan gets two wishes from the destiny equivilant of a genie. One of his wishes is for a pair of horses that can run as fast as the wind and never need to sleep or eat. Unfortunately the guy who grants the wishes is only a partial genie (1/4 jinn), so he can only grant either 1/4 of the wish, or the whole wish in 1/4 the size. So Ketlan ends up with an amazing pair of magical horses that are super fast, never sleep, and never eat, but they're tiny. They're minature horses (which do actually exist) so he and his buddy, Isian, can't actually ride them. The genie guy thought of this and threw in a very sturdy cart with the horses -- it's not very big and kind of hard to stay inside when they're moving super fast. They end up having to tie themselves in.
He doesn't realize that having horses that can run that fast can give you really bad motion sickness and they're hard to stop. Also he didn't think through the whole "never need to sleep" bit because they don't need sleep but he does. They're sort of like annoying yippy dogs hyped up on espresso. In order to make sure they don't run away Ketlan has to tie them to a tree at night and they run around the tree all night, digging themselves into a ditch taller than they are by morning. Magical? yes. Practical? Not really. You can see why I want to keep them but probably shouldn't. He names them Herman and Sherman. What do you think about the horses? should I keep them or ditch them?
I think that's it on the pet front. Not a lot of pets but some very memorable ones. There may be others but I can't think of them right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment