Spider-Guy and Poison (I’m kidding!)
Perhaps two of the loudest voices in my head have been Luke Callindor from Legends of Windemere and Clyde from War of Nytefall. A big reason for this is because they could be considered my two first ‘real’ protagonists. It’s a tough one to really call since I made them in my freshman year of college, but I designed Sin in high school. Unlike Sin, Luke and Clyde rose to a higher level for one specific reason:
I became them for a few hours every week.
Not to the extent where I would dress up . . . Well, I did play as Clyde in a live action role-playing game. Anyway, I’ve mentioned many times on this blog that I played ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ and ‘Vampire: The Masqurade’. In high school, these games were just fun adventures with action, comedy, and very little character. Once I hit college, the purpose of the games included telling a story. First, I created Luke (Callindor would be given to him a year later) and set out to be an inexperienced youth who is determined to prove his worth as a hero. It was fun acting as him during the sessions and I got better at it as the game progressed for 2.5 years. He went through a lot of growth while I did the same and there were times I enjoyed escaping to his world when classes got tough. Yet, Luke probably wasn’t my main stress reliever since he had a nasty habit of getting into tense situations.
No, the one who ended up taking me to a point where I lost most cares and found myself in a comforting abyss was Clyde. That sounds pretty dark, but there was an odd freedom to playing this vampire. I’ll admit that I went too far at first. The guy who played Nimby wanted to run a Vampire game, so I agreed to help him practice being a GM. I made Clyde and basically went on a wild rampage, which resulted in my friend threatening to drop my humanity level to 1 if I ever did that again. This continued the trend of Clyde being a force of destruction whether he tried or not. My rolls with him were oddly lucky, so he developed an arrogance. Things got even more amusing when everyone else wanted to switch to Mage and I was allowed to carry Clyde over. He was made a day-walker and that put an enormous target on his head, which resulted in some massive battles. Unlike Luke Callindor whose game ended with no closure, I was forced to retire Clyde because he simply became too powerful.
Now, this is all a lot of background, but it explains why I hear their voices more often than other characters. I’ve always considered Luke and Clyde two sides of the same coin, which is me. At least, the me that I wanted to be. Through Luke, I got to be a noble hero who sought to make a mark in the world and save others. He was brave and always found a way to get back up after falling. On the other side, Clyde was brutal and itching for a fight just to be entertained. He had no interest in saving the world unless he got to feed his ego and become stronger. There was a stubborn defiance to the way the world wanted him to go that I envied. Have these traits carried over into their books? I think so, but I’ll admit that Luke Callindor came off more fragile than I expected and Clyde has odd bouts of mortal humility. Guess parts of the real me keep slipping in.
One thing I remember distinctly is a problem that still turns up and that’s when the voices get crossed. Not sure how to explain this exactly, but it really only happens with Luke and Clyde. There were times in college where I would play one in the morning and the other at night. Whoever I was first would linger and there would be a problem for a bit where the wrong personality was being used. I actually never noticed this when I was Luke first because it came off as Clyde trying to be nice. When I was Clyde in the morning, Luke would suddenly be aggressive, mouthy, threatening, and about as heroic as a drunken gangster. This would usually end when a player who knew both characters would stop me and bought out that I wasn’t Clyde at the moment. Oops.
This taught me to compartmentalize the voices a bit more, but they don’t always listen and continue to mingle. I keep getting this feeling that Luke and Clyde want a chance to tangle with each other. Both of them at full power would be impressive and it’s something I wanted to write for a long time. Stuff like this gets me wondering if there are individual entities in my mind because I have to argue with them about this. I nearly had Lost create a fake Luke Callindor to fight Clyde, but realized Luke hadn’t been born yet. Those two are fairly persistent and it’s probably going to get worse if I ever get to the other half of ‘The Four’.
Legends of Windemere 
It makes sense that characters like them would end up arguing if they were in the same place for any length of time.
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It would be a really fun conversation.
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Have to wonder how you would be able to do both characters at the same time.
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Very carefully?
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I guess so.
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Ah, our friends, the voices-in-our-heads… Does the fact you keep hearing them mean your mental block is diminishing and your writing mojo is coming back?
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Honestly, I wrote the post before things went really south. Luke can be silent since he’s retired, but I kinda need Clyde to up the chattiness. A storm this weekend might help though. 3 days being stuck inside.
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Ouch. Or yay. Not sure which 🙂
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Time will tell. I was going to write last weekend, but life decided I needed a suplex through a glass table.
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Double ouch. I’ve done that once. To a friend’s table, no less. I was so embarrassed, I paid for a new one.
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Hope it was wood and not glass or marble.
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Crystal. It’s a marvel no one got hurt. In my defense, it was a coffee table made entirely of glass (legs included), and our friend wanted a low-light environment. Damn thing was practically invisible. I knocked it with my leg and the top went flying right off. Smashed into a zillion pieces.
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Yikes. Good thing no one was hurt.
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It makes sense that your characters with the strongest personalities would get more imagination time. As an old wrestling coach, I know what a suplex is and it’s not easy to pull off.
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Pretty sure the universe can do it without breaking a sweat. Like the old WWE stuff, but meaner.
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The universe seems to be overpowering for me some days.
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At least it provides pizza and whiskey.
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When you can find common ground between two character who see extreme (two sides of the same coin as you mentioned) it just goes to show how great these characters are. I’m glad you enjoy writing their scenes. Sounds like Clyde had an interesting “birth.”
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Clyde has always had the wilder origin and stories. Th funny thing is that none of them can really transfer since I put him in Windemere.
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🙂 Sounds like Luke would be stalking someone until that person turns around and says, “Luke! What ARE you doing?” 😀
We had a campaign where we chopped off a vampire’s head, then stored it in a Bag of Holding. I’m not sure where that idea first came from, but our GM let us do it. We’d open the bag and ask him quest-relevant questions periodically…
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That’s if he gets caught. He can be stealthy when he’s serious. I do start him as a teenager while Clyde is a couple hundred, so there’s a maturity difference.
I’m surprised the head stayed alive. The vampires in our games usually died and went poof.
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We decided his undeadness would make it possible.
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Works for me.
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