Yay! Thank you, Anon!
3. Favorite Line/Scene you wrote this year:
It’s a really tough choice, but this one from Cup of Their Deserving probably wins the prize:
“Oh you’re not really getting it are you? No, of course you’re not. Let me use small words this time.” He stops, takes a breath, and continues. “This place – is a prison. By logical extension, the people you’ve elected to keep incarcerated here are your prisoners. They’re sent here from England – from families that find them inconvenient, from prisons where they’re being held for crimes you consider easily overlooked in the face of your grand mission – which is to say, crimes of necessity – and kept here by way of force and the surrounding terrain, such that should they choose to leave, they have no way of doing so and nowhere to go if they should manage to escape. You can dress it up all you like, but you’ve still got them tilling your fields whether they like it or not, working for a pittance, denied the right to live their lives – simply put, you’re a slave driver – nothing more, nothing less. Oh, no, you don’t beat them – never that, but as a friend of mine once reminded me, a slave is a slave and it doesn’t matter what else you do as long as they’re denied the right to leave. Worse, you’ve elected to lie to yourself about it in order to sleep at night, and one day – one day quite soon, one hopes – it’s all going to come crashing down around your ears. There – perhaps that’ll get the point across to you. Remind me, Mr. Oglethorpe – I really must return here the next time I’ve a bowel problem as you, I’m certain, can be relied upon to give me the shits.”
Then again, there’s this one from Battle Raven:
“They took him from us,” she says, her voice shaking. “They stole him from his family and locked him in that horrible place, and I want them all to regret it. God help me, James – I want every last one of them to know that they took a good man and killed him and that I am coming for their heads, because I will not allow them to whisper that I hurt my husband one moment longer. I want them all as furious as I am at the men who did it, if not because they understand who Thomas was, then because they fear me – because they fear us, and we would not be threatening them if he were still alive. I want them all to pay dearly, and every day I think it, I can hear Thomas chiding me about doing things for the right reasons and I don’t care.”
12. Favorite Character to Write this year:
This one’s easy. Madi, hands down, because stepping into her head is just… calming. There’s nothing in there that’s not in its proper place, it’s calm, it’s quiet – she’s just a gift of a character to work with, because she has this absolute understanding of who she is and what she deserves out of life and what she has to sacrifice in order to be that person. I frequently find myself writing her and having her do and say things I wouldn’t think of, but she does, because as mad as it sounds, she’s always about three steps ahead of me.
Meg's Mumbles 