contrary characters!
Jul. 7th, 2003 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darklunaIt looks like what I have here is two separate but intertwined stories, such that I have to build them both at once, supporting each other. The second story is scaffolding that will mostly get pulled out from under the first, but it has to be there during construction. sigh
His name was Valor, but no one called him that.
His mother, who he guessed had loved him though she never really understood him, named him in some sort of misguided fantasy of chivalry. Maybe she thought the world would change, and that kind of thing would come into fashion again. People believed some goofy things at the turn of the twenty-second century.
Starting when he was fourteen, he made everyone call him Donnelly, and he never really gave much thought to his real first name anymore. It had become a sad joke to him by the time he was in his twenties anyway.
***
He was normal enough growing up...too smart to really enjoy school, too interested in other things to really apply himself and get into any of the accelerated programs that were pretty much the only way into college anymore. He didn't really want to go to college anyway; he didn't see the point.
He liked to read, and when he was in high school would often skip his calculus or biology homework to read the books for English and then, when those ran out, whatever caught his eye. He read fiction and history, poetry and fantasy and philosophy. Like any teenager, he was happiest alone in his room with his thoughts, listening to his music. Valor's father had left when he was twelve, and his mom got to keep the house and most of the money. Now she and the house alike were genteelly decaying in a neighborhood full of genteel decay. Most of the old Queen Anne houses had long since been chopped up into apartments, but not Val's house. He knew almost from the moment he understood the snobbery that he had to get away from it.
The one real gift his parents gave him was a love of books, and not just reading electronic, linked books in a reader. They had a big collection of real old-fashioned, on-paper books. When Val was little, they'd read to him, taking turns, all three of them sitting together on the couch, leaning close to see the pictures if there were any. Val had never felt as much as he thought a family should as at those times. He'd sneak into the library when his parents weren't paying attention, and take books down from the shelves, to smell their pages and feel their solid weight in his hands. There would always be people who didn't want to give that up for a backlit screen and built-in background information. Val knew that when he was seven years old and in love with the smell of old paper.
His name was Valor, but no one called him that.
His mother, who he guessed had loved him though she never really understood him, named him in some sort of misguided fantasy of chivalry. Maybe she thought the world would change, and that kind of thing would come into fashion again. People believed some goofy things at the turn of the twenty-second century.
Starting when he was fourteen, he made everyone call him Donnelly, and he never really gave much thought to his real first name anymore. It had become a sad joke to him by the time he was in his twenties anyway.
***
He was normal enough growing up...too smart to really enjoy school, too interested in other things to really apply himself and get into any of the accelerated programs that were pretty much the only way into college anymore. He didn't really want to go to college anyway; he didn't see the point.
He liked to read, and when he was in high school would often skip his calculus or biology homework to read the books for English and then, when those ran out, whatever caught his eye. He read fiction and history, poetry and fantasy and philosophy. Like any teenager, he was happiest alone in his room with his thoughts, listening to his music. Valor's father had left when he was twelve, and his mom got to keep the house and most of the money. Now she and the house alike were genteelly decaying in a neighborhood full of genteel decay. Most of the old Queen Anne houses had long since been chopped up into apartments, but not Val's house. He knew almost from the moment he understood the snobbery that he had to get away from it.
The one real gift his parents gave him was a love of books, and not just reading electronic, linked books in a reader. They had a big collection of real old-fashioned, on-paper books. When Val was little, they'd read to him, taking turns, all three of them sitting together on the couch, leaning close to see the pictures if there were any. Val had never felt as much as he thought a family should as at those times. He'd sneak into the library when his parents weren't paying attention, and take books down from the shelves, to smell their pages and feel their solid weight in his hands. There would always be people who didn't want to give that up for a backlit screen and built-in background information. Val knew that when he was seven years old and in love with the smell of old paper.
