For the deep dive ask: 2. 7. 9. & 11. please
Thank you so much for the ask! These were fun to answer.
2. What do you hope readers will take away from your WIP? Is there an intentional theme (or themes) to the story?
Hmm. I'll have to guess at this a bit, because I've only written so much, but. It's probably going to be about self or love or both. Don't forget yourself to love another but don't be so wrapped up in yourself that you're blind to everything else, either.
7. What is the most heart-wrenching scene in your WIP? Why?
This has been answered for Ocean's Heart so for Soulwood -- in one of the find the word games, there's a snippet that's from what this scene is, at least what it is as of now. There's a time where her forest is attacked and Keithia is helpless and she chooses to protect her forest over her heart.
She makes an extremely hard choice, one that's the reason I put 'morality' as one of the themes. It happens in a moment where she's cornered and has no real choice, just two horrible things she doesn't want, two large sacrifices, neither one she wants to make but she does and it's one of those things that should be hard but is, in the moment, almost too easy.
9. What does your protagonist want most? What would they do to achieve this? What is something they wouldn’t do to achieve this?
Calypso wants to be known. But not at the price of being nothing but a beast. She likes it when hymns are composed around her name, when sailors dip their fingers in her water and thank her for the gentle touch. She likes the scraps of gratitude she gets but she wouldn't trade her Kraken name or form for more of it, wouldn't trade her divinity for more mortal fear and awareness. She won't basically, go too far in either direction. Occasional ships are taken and occasional men are saved by her hand. It's enough.
11. What is something from your WIP that you just really want to ramble about? (Go on, do it.)
Oooh. Calypso and Poseidon are pretty interesting. Calypso's dislike of him is on many levels but basically comes down to the fact that she does not believe he is fit to be a patron of the sea.
He is the only god not to naturally have claim to the ocean, who is not born from or to it. He wiggled around that and the way he did made her spiteful. She has many reasons she dislikes him and he is her least favorite sea ruler, her least favorite god of the pantheon. Her distaste for Aphrodite is on the shallow side, but Poseidon has wronged her in ways that are more personal than a distaste for the ocean, though that's kind of a thing, too. He never spends time in the sea, really and she doesn't like that either -- how can a god be god of something he does not surround himself with, is not part of or from, something he does not even like? She takes it to be kind of blasphemous, wrong on a soul-deep level, an imbalance of power. It should not be praised that the best-known sea ruler is the one who does not fit. It's something she's bitter over. Poseidon really only acknowledges his domain when he's in a fit of anger or at war. There is absolutely no good feelings between the two and Calypso tolerates his hold on her domain because she has little choice in the matter. He is a patron whether she likes it or not.
I don't know if he'll make an actual appearance but he will be mentioned and her dislike of him will be obvious. She's on neutral ground with the rest of her fellow patrons, more or less. Amphitrite is the closest she has to a friend and you'll the two interact, on probably more than one occasion. She welcomes Amphitrite as a ruler and that's been bittered a bit by her tie to Poseidon, which there is a reason for (which is another thing Calypso does not like). Just. If something involves Poseidon, assume Calypso doesn't like it.
The dynamic with them was not something I was expecting when starting Ocean's Heart, so it's interesting that it's a thing and how strongly she feels about it. There was a bit of interest, I think, about Poseidon and/or Calypso's relations with other sea patrons so I hope this was interesting. I got a bit carried away.
