Typecasting

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Jenkins's Ear Day
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National Day (Iraq)

 

I don’t think I’m the only person who does this: when I write a story, I have a tendency to “cast” the characters—I pick actors, other characters I like, people I actually know, what-have-you to play the characters in my stories.* Sure it’s fun, but it also serves a purpose for me: it helps keep all my characters from turning into two people.

 

And the fun thing about casting for stuff like this is that you can make some seriously weird choices, which would never be possible in non-speculative fiction.

 

Well, a few days ago I realized how very odd my casting choices have become when I realized who was playing one of those damn throwaway characters who stuck around demanding her own story.  Dweijidŕ is an arhode (fuzzy, bipedal, four-armed, predatorial as all hell), a former cop who became a soldier and then later wound up at loose ends doing mercenary work. She likes reading old epics, shows a dismissive genius with languages, and could tear even other female arhodes apart if she felt like it, and she often does feel like it, but she also has a distaste for murder, if not for property damage.

 

And she is played in my head, flawlessly … by Ron Perlman.

 

God, I love what I do.

 

*Granted, given the stories I write, a lot of these are in voice or even essence only. I tend to populate my worlds with the things from Jim Henson’s workshop, so that the workshop itself would most likely be hired to do a third of my characters, and only a third would be diverse actors. That last third, of course, would consist entirely of Doug Jones swathed in prosthetics and standing in front of a greenscreen.

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Oh, forgot to respond to this, but I must say: I WOULD TOTALLY KILL YOU.

Nah, I think I could handle being played by Marina Sirtis, as long as I get better writers than Troi got. (*aliens on viewscreen unleash streams of curses and threats at Picard* "I sense hostility, Captain!")

I do the involuntary casting with some people, but it's not always with famous people. I see you, but I don't actually have a name for the person playing you ...