4, 11, 23 for Miles; 6, 13, 26 for Jed; 2, 21, 24 for Laurie!! ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪
All right, get ready for some angst! (And a little bit of fluff that managed to sneak its way in there):
Miles
4. Has your character ever been hurt or betrayed by someonethey thought they could depend on? What happened?
He’s usually the one doing the hurting (albeitaccidentally). But… Heath did turn him in for making a new vampireillegally, which almost led to his execution. To be fair, Heath didn’t havemuch of a choice, but it still hurt. There was also an incident with a humannamed Jodie. They were lovers, but she eventually discovered that vampiresexisted and didn’t take it well.
11. What are your character’s coping mechanisms?
Well, there’s the obvious thing where he tries to substitutephysical intimacy for actual emotional connection. Aside from the obvious,though, he’s also great at trivializing his problems—“Yeah, I almost died, butit’s whatever.” This causes issues when the things he’s trivializing turn outto be a very big deal. On the relatively positive side, he does make great useof humor and physical exercise as a way to cope with or distract himself fromthings. It might not be the best thing, but it’s working for him.
23. Is your character more physically or emotionally strong?Why is this?
He has way more physical strength than emotional strength,mostly because he does not handle loss well at all. He’s so terrified of losingpeople—not just to death, but to simple drifting apart—that he constantly fucksup trying to hard to keep the people he cares about close. Fundamentally, he isso afraid of being alone that he loses all sense of reason when he senses thatmight happen. I’d rather have him on my team in a fist fight than a negotiation,is what I’m saying.
Jed
6. Have they ever committed a crime, or something they feltwas wrong? What was it?
He… I mean, he killed his mother. He did it to protect hisfound family, and she had previously shot him several times and tortured Miles,but he still knows it wasn’t right. He doesn’t regret that she’s dead, but hedoes regret that he killed her.
13. What does it take to make your character cry?
It takes a lot. He doesn’t cry easily, and when he does,it’s usually more from surprise or horror than sadness. When his dad was put ondeath row, he didn’t cry at all because he’d spent months expecting it, butwhen he had a near-death experience with a vampire sucking his blood outside abar, he cried so much he almost crashed his car. And when he was turned into avampire himself, he cried the first time he saw himself in the mirror becauseit had just hit him that his life was never going to be the same again. (Anexception to this general rule: when he begged Miles to stay alive, he wascrying.)
26. What, in your character’s life, puts the most pressureon them?
Before he met Miles, he was spending all his time trying tostop his dad from accidentally hunting a human instead of a vampire. That… wasa lot of pressure. As a vampire, he’s somehow ended up holding a lot ofpeople’s lives in his hands because he’s the only one who can deal with humansin the daylight. He can protect vampires in a way most other vamps can’t, andwhile he’s glad to do it, it’s a lot sometimes.
Laurie
2. Does your character have a deep and/or dark secret? Ifso, what is it?
He’s… Shockingly, he never managed to accumulate any secretsso deep and dark he’d bother keeping them. When he does something wrong, he’sopen about it.
21. Does your character have anyone they really care about,to the point that they would give their life for them? If so, who are they andwhat is your character’s relation to them? If not, do they wish they did? Isthere anyone they wish they could build such a relationship with?
Heath. Not only is Heath kind of a mentor figure to him(despite the fact that this looks weird to humans, given that Laurie appears fortyand Heath appears about fifteen), but he’s also the last of his people. WhenHeath is gone, his language and culture will all die with him. So it’s not justthat they’re close (even though they are—it’s hard to spend 175+ years withsomeone and not form some kind of bond), it’s that Heath represents history andLaurie’s role of a historian and what it means to be a vampire.
24. What is your character’s most important possession? Why?
He has his wife’s favorite earrings, the only things he keptfrom his human life. He pierced his ears so he could wear them, and given thatvampires have to burn themselves with silver to slow their healing enough for apiercing to take, it’s a commitment. He hasn’t so much as taken that earringout in several decades, and every time he sees himself in a mirror (aluminum-backedonly, of course), he thinks of his wife and smiles.