#wr.anons

[arustysnake]

Describe your character's voice. Do they speak with an accent? Are there certain words they use more often, or certain quirks to the way they talk (such as using filler words or mumbling)? Are they soft-spoken, or typically louder? Do they like the sound of their own voice, or is it something they try to avoid listening to when possible?

Ollie's got some of that Maine sound to him, most noticeable in his soft rs and liltier, long syllables - especially obvious in his yeah. He also has his voice and his teacher voice (elementary and high school sub-types, naturally) which irons out those more regional features. Then there's his singing voice! Which he mostly keeps to himself; choir's a terrifying extracurricular. He was never brave enough to join it and can't imagine volunteering to teach it, either.

He's got a habit for scattering absolutelys, definitelys, obviouslys, and similar affirmations - great! fantastic! - through conversations; these might be entirely sincere, utterly scathing, or downright frantic. Really is one of his multi-purpose standards. He can get hedgey when he's nervous, and is a just-about constant hand-talker unless he's trying very hard not to be, in which case he needs something to do with his hands. Safely assume that if his hands aren't busy, they're moving with him as he speaks. He tends to keep that hand-talking pretty close, contained in his own space - can't be flailing around the art projects! - but those gestures do have a way of expanding if he's got the room.

Most of his particular ways of speaking are much more consciously managed while in the classroom. He's got a few tricks to help pace and organize himself at work; in the wild, he tends to talk quite quickly, think out loud, fumble his words, mutter, and trail off, losing his train of thought and/or jumping the rails to another. He tends to be pretty emphatic regardless of setting or mood, with a very active cadence.

Ollie can project, certainly - not yell, he tries to avoid actually yelling unless it's a proper emergency - for the sake of the classroom and swim coaching. Otherwise, he doesn't get especially loud unless he has a good reason to be. He often sinks into the lowest register of his voice and succumbs to a bit of rasping, creaking vocal fry at the end of a long day. But he isn't teaching choir, so it's fine.

He's used to his own voice - gotta be, when you teach - but doesn't especially enjoy it, especially because he knows he can ramble and those nerves make it difficult to stop, but he's still saying things, and he just wishes he wasn't, and yeah. He hates leaving voicemails almost as much as he hates making phonecalls in the first place. Ollie enjoys singing, and will sing along to whatever's playing in snatches as he works - but even that's not really about enjoying the sound of his own voice so much as enjoying the song and the music.

[arustysnake]

What's something you're looking forward to now that the semester is starting up again?

Oh, the start's the hardest. Until report card season. Fuck. But, wow. There's - so much. That I'd usually be excited about. God.

Like everybody getting used to the idea that the art room is the only place in a school where the only way to fail is to not even try. To never even give yourself the chance to just enjoy making something! It can take a little while, for some of them. Or a lot. Whenever it happens, though, when a kid just - goes for it, kicks through how scared they are of not being good enough, or creative enough, or whatever else is stopping them, makes some art, and finds that joy along the way? Amazing. Fantastic. A good day.

There. The settling in. That's the something. Something I won't be doing, really, because I'll be out of here as soon as the house is s

[arustysnake]

Describe your character's moral compass. Is there anything that would make them abandon or shift their morality? If so, to what extent? If not, why not?

Neutral Good, to go all Dungeons and Dragons on this!

Ollie is broadly a helper, someone trying to do good. As a teacher, he's doing that within a system that often puts you at odds with written and unwritten expectations that don't actually, kindly serve every student or situation. He feels more beholden to his students than to whoever he's working for, but, well, he also needs a job, so some things just have to be done by the book. (Does he feel that it's "right" to grade kids on art? No, not really, but report cards need filing.) And resources are always short, and sometimes administration just has crappy priorities! So he's used to smiling and nodding at the rules while looking for a more genuinely supportive, functional way to do things. Overall, though, the moral quandaries of an art teacher are pretty low-key!

Much lower-key than how you're supposed to deal with the apparent fact that your mom's been murdered for being a horrific family-cursed snake monster. Or handling the one-two punch of mourning the loss of his only family while trying to unpack the complicated good and bad of those relationships, which contained multitudes of well-meant but ultimately harmful behaviours and patterns. Ollie's been struggling with the "right" and "wrong" of this for a long time, and that's only gotten murkier. It was all tricky enough when his mother and grandmother were alive; now, well. It's just him, and finding out more about why they were the way they were hasn't made handling that grief any easier. He's learned to love his difficult family in some difficult way, and he's trying, still, to understand and remember them fairly and fondly. But the questions aren't getting simpler. Was his mom some kind of monster? Is he going to be? Regardless, what would he do faced with whoever made that call in Deirdre O'Rourke's case, the hunter(s) who decided she deserved to die, to keep others safe? Abandoning his generally compassionate, good-leaning moral stance seems like a lot, but... what's the "good" path, here? He doesn't like the logical follow-through trailing after any of the answers he can see. How much is he going to let this change him, and how much choice does he actually have, in that? Who knows! Not me. Pay no attention to the hands behind the keyboard.

[arustysnake]

do you love easily?

Well, a) wow, that's very personal, and b) that's very broad. Just in general? Or as applies to which kind of love? Or which aspect, specifically - falling in love, staying in love...? And "easily" relative to what? What's our rubric look like, in terms of establishing criteria for easy/difficult? Is there a "despite" built in? Seems like there could be. This question needs workshopping for clarity.

All of which is to say the answer is probably no. It's a wonderful idea, though, isn't it? Love being easy. In general.

[arustysnake]

Is there anything weird about you?

N That sounds too Not especially! Things have been weird around me, lately, but that's nothing personal. Just life, here, in this place. You know how it is!

[arustysnake]

What is one thing you will never do again?

Come hom

Come back here.

[arustysnake]

Anonymously say something from your heart to someone you've met in Wicked's Rest, without letting on who that someone is.

There is something seriously, terribly wrong with you, and it's definitely not whatever Inge's bringing scotch abou

I swear to Christ, you better not be about to say what I think you're going t

[Message deleted.]

[arustysnake]

Meta: What is your biggest inspiration for your character? Has it changed over time? How do you think it might change?

Ollie's a real mishmash that came together on the run, and a totally new character to me, so I'm sure I'll find more inspiration to fold in! But really, the key thing is absolutely this group in general. Everyone's wild creative energy is just beautiful to behold!!! And I was browsing the lovely skeletons our majestic mod squad put together, and thought hey, I haven't written anything like that. Could be fun!

There's a crazy corkboard-with-string collection of things under the cut. We'll see where it all goes!

I actually cobbled Ollie's name together from some Irish folklore, because names are hard and I'm a hack - the Oilliphéist is an Irish water serpent (or serpents), and one of the more famous folktales about these creatures involves a character named Ó Ruairc, so! There you go.

Oilliphéist as a word is drawn from oll (great) and phéist (said something like faysht or paysht depending on dialect?) which seems to be used to describe anything on the wyrm-worm continuum of coiling/crawling creatures, from a "fabulous beast" like a dragon, sea serpent, etc. to a literal snake to a literal (or figurative) worm. Range. Love it.

The Oilliphéist(s) is a vaguely fae entity (or entities) - they have similar weaknesses, for instance - and so I've tried to work a little faeish whimsy and weirdness and unsettling, eerie stuff into his family's whole vibe. Natch, I've stolen some of that whimsy from people and places I've known; the O'Rourke house owes a little to my oma's old farmhouse and workshop, full of seemingly endless shelves of hoarded things and creaky architectural oddness and chaotic gardening.

And now for the snake-adjacent human sacrifice gods!! There's this beautiful Irish animated movie called The Secret of Kells - super recommend - and they imagined Crom Cruach, an ancient deity who's on the mysterious side, as this truly unsettling snake creature coiling endlessly in a dark, watery void. Wicked! Crom was something like "the dark/crooked god of the heap/mound," as in, a heap of offerings, a mound of the dead after battle, etc., and was supposedly defeated by Saint Patrick, who toppled his favourite monument at a place called Magh Slécht - the "plain of prostrations/monuments," a hilly area covered in stone tombs. Supposedly, this is where a historical High King called Tigernmas died mysteriously with many followers during some kind of bloody ritual for Crom. Wild!

Crom Dubh, another uncertain sort of god, seems to be based on Crom Cruach and maybe a pirate or highwayman or local chieftain - he also tangled with Saint Patrick, who supposedly turned Dun Briste, where Crom Dubh lived, into the seastack island it is today. Some stories say that's where Patrick sent those snakes/pagans he supposedly cast out of Ireland. And I just think all of that's pretty neat! What it has to do with Ollie and his family, well, maybe nothing! He's heard some very tall tales, lately...