Character Rants

I love writing rants, and arguments, and pitch-the-glassware fights. I never plan for them, they never end up in the outline; they just sort of happen, which makes it all the more fun.

Just got through this one today. I didn't know MC1 had a middle name until MC2 used it.

Jessica didn't wait for a response, and would have ridden over any she tried to make, she was sure. "Please allow me to make it entirely clear: he is the reason we know what little we do about our own unlikely history. What guesses we have regarding the Fraonir's motives have all come from him, though he has never spent more than a few hours in their company. You, on the other hand, spent four years in their company, do I mistake the facts?"

"Well—"

"And we have yet to hear any insights from you, Kyali Elliana Corwynall."

"I—"

No stopping Jessica when she got on one of these. Kyali broke off with a sigh as the harangue gathered momentum. Jessica's brow had acquired that line that meant ducking behind furniture might not be a bad idea.

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So where's yours, Jo??

My MC breaks the night before a battle. The castle is under siege and she's just had to face a delegation of the older knights who disagree with the way she has planned the defence. She returns to her room absolutely, emotionally drained only to find there the old Gatekeeper who should have prevented her from entering the time warp and being thrown into the year 1347. Jenny accuses of her of dereliction of duty when she left her post:
‘Why weren’t you there, Gwenelda? Why didn’t you stop me from falling through the time-warp?’ she implored.
‘I was just wandering off to get myself a nice cup of tea.’
‘“I was getting a nice cup of tea”?’ Jenny repeated with withering sarcasm. ‘You have to be joking. I’ve been through two months of pure hell just because of a lousy cup of tea?’
‘It was not a “lousy” cup of tea. It was a very nice one, thank you. The little mobile café in the car park at the ’Henge makes a very tasty Earl Grey. They serve it with little shortbread biscuits – homemade by the taste of them.’
While the old lady was lost in the memory of past delights, she didn’t notice that her ward’s face had turned a very angry red colour and the skin stretched over her clenched fists was pure white.
‘You’re criminally insane, you stupid woman!’ Jenny shouted furiously. ‘You neglected your job and ruined my life yet you don’t seem even the slightest bit sorry.’

The rant continues but it is great for the MC to clear the air and also for the reader to see the depth of stress facing her.

I raised Friend and aimed him right at the scalebag.

"Now, now, we don't want to--"

Snarling, I tightened one claw about Friend's trigger. "I slept in the corpse of a water buffalo--I'm tougher than you!"

He ripped the drawer open, grabbed the dildo, and slammed it on the desk. “This hurts. Okay? I’m tired of pretending I don’t care.

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LOL! I took this really wrong when I first read it. That's so funny! I'll post one of mine soon! Cool thread ^_^

Mine almost never rant. They may argue with each other, but almost nobody ever gets to rant on his or her own. Not sure why.

I love character rants. I have a lot of angry pent up characters, so I know what you mean.

Here's one! I have another one, but that MC has a really foul mouth. . . .

Dionysos rounded on Praxis. Why couldn’t he breath properly? What was wrong with the air? “She was my friend! Of course it’s my concern!” he cried.
Praxis furrowed his brow, but lowered his head and sighed. “Yes,” he said. “Dionysos, I am sorry."
Dionysos shook his head. Once had been too many times. “You’re not sorry for anyone, no matter who dies or how important they are to you. You don’t care that-” he couldn’t say her name. “You won’t care if Sam died either, or me, unless you still had something useful for us to do!”

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The MC has hitched a ride with two good old boys. MC is wearing a blue dress. The dress was put on in a dare then he was mistaken for a shoplifter and ran into the street where the good old boys (Billy and Garnett)were passing by. When they arrive in anunhabited area and start drinking the bgoys begin joking about the dress.

***************


Billy must have appreciated Garnett’s joke, because he hooted and held up a cigarette lighter in a show of heartfelt gratitude. You’d have thought Garnett just sang Freebird. I bet it was their song, if you know what I mean.

“Spank you. Spank you very much!” Garnett was on a roll and Billy was his biggest fan.

I blurted out without thinking “Now, that’s just plain wrong.”

Billy shot me an iron look “Right and wrong. Now just who the hell are you to know the difference? Nobody knows for sure what’s right and what’s wrong. You‘re wearin’ a damn stolen dress and tell me what’s right and what’s wrong?”

“Who died and made you queen of the righteous anyway?” Garnett joined in.

“Whoa, back it up there just a minute guys, I was trying to make a joke.” I lied again “It just didn’t come off as good as the ones you fellas made.”

Billy kicked at the ground, lifted his baseball cap and scratched his head. “I didn’t mean to get so damned riled up. It just pisses me off when somebody tries to tell me what’s right or wrong.”

Billy settled down and lit three cigarettes. Three on a single match. Bad luck for sure. Didn’t he watch cartoons? He handed me and Garnett one each and smoked the third one. We took drags from the hick peace pipes and passed the nearly empty whiskey bottle around.

“Boys” he spoke slowly and thoughtfully “here’s the problem with cut and dried thinking. It don’t leave no wiggle room for the underdog.”

“Amen to that” Garnett nodded at the soapbox philosopher “Tell it like it is, Billy. Tell it like it is.”

“Right and wrong” Billy pointed at me, bottle in hand “say you borrow my car and forget to tell me because you need to get to work and feed your family. That’s right to you because you can earn a paycheck. But it’s wrong to me because it’s my car and you didn’t bother to ask.”

Garnett poked me in the ribs and said “He’s a damned fine speaker, don’t you think?”

“Never heard better” I was getting sick of pacifying these boneheads by agreeing with the twisted logic of Billy’s fermented brain.

Billy took another swig of whiskey and continued.

He lifted the pistol and aimed it, arm’s length, at me “If I catch you and blow your damn thievin’ brains out, that’s right to me because it’s my car you stole, and it’s wrong to you because you’re as dead as four o’clock.”

Billy stood there tottering on his drunken feet, sweat pouring down his face. His eyes floating around like two dead things in bloodshot pools of yellow with the gun inches from my head. He shook his head trying to fight off the effects of the whiskey, then dropped his arm, the pistol resting down by his side.

“And that’s why nobody, no damn body, can tell you what’s right or what’s wrong” he finished his southern fried oratorio.

Garnett looked at his pal with as much admiration as any man ever had for his friend “Billy, that’s deep. That’s damn deep. Like Waylon says, What come around, goes around.”

Ohhh, I like this thread, because my MC snapped and snapped BADLY.

Background: Yinn and Kite are alone in the desert, struggling to survive and reach a distant destination. They have nobody to rely upon but each other. Yinn has started falling in love with Kite. They just had a fight with a giant scorpion the size of a small house and Kite was stung in the gut. He survived through Yinn's quick thinking, but now that he's out of immediate danger, all the stress and fear and anger comes rushing out.

I apologize about the length.

WARNING: Creative cursing, cultural insults, and general frothing at the mouth.

Kite’s smirk deepened, and Vaeyinn felt the stress and terror of the previous night curdle into anger. “You know,” he said heatedly, “this is precisely the reason we didn’t try your idiotic ‘fire’ idea. ‘Burn the scorpion’… wonderful plan. Perhaps you forgot that the beasts have a tendency to sting themselves to death when confronted by fire? Its thrashing would probably have killed us both.” He had the distinct feeling that he was being irrational, but for the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He’d been strong the whole time Kite’s life was actually in jeopardy. Now that he seemed to be principally out of danger, everything he’d been holding back came crashing down. He was almost relieved to let it go. “I suppose this is all rather poetic, if you look at it that way, but I’m not in a position to appreciate the irony! This is idiotic,” he snapped, “and it didn’t have to happen, if you’d paid a shred of attention to your surroundings, or perhaps just exercised enough intelligence to move to a safe distance after you injured the thing….”

Kite swallowed hard, eyes closing briefly, then gave him a look of gentle exasperation. “Yinn… shut up,” he croaked.

“Perhaps you’d like to tell me what took you so burning long?” Vaeyinn wondered, folding his arms and glaring down at him. “You could have gotten me killed! I’m fortunate I only have a nasty leg wound to deal with – it could have taken my leg off.”

Kite tried to speak but coughed instead, and the spasms of his stomach forced a strangled cry of agony from his throat. He wrapped his arms instinctively around his stomach, trying to calm his own breathing so it wouldn’t hurt so much, jaw quivering as he fought to relax when every muscle in his body wanted to tense up. The sight jarred Yinn out of his anger and he dropped down to his knees, kindling a burning pain in his own wounded thigh. He wrapped his hands around Kite’s wrists and pried them away from the puncture, pinning them to the bedroll at his sides. He held him until Kite succeeded in calming himself down and his body relaxed against the pad, breathing shallow and quick, but controlled. When he released him, Vaeyinn was shocked to see trails of moisture from the corners of his eyes disappearing into his hair.

“Kite,” he said much more softly. “Please. Be still.”

Kite made a soft, growling sound and let his head fall to the side. “I froze,” he ground out between his teeth, “but so did you. Would have… would have taken your head off if I hadn’t pushed you out of the way, or else you’d be… lying here instead of me, with a hole in your stomach. You can blame me for that if you want,” he hissed, narrowed, angry gaze focusing on Yinn, “but you’re the reason I got hurt, so … I think… you should just… go masturbate a camel.”

“My dick in your mother’s ribs,” Vaeyinn shot back. “You should have stayed clear!”

“You were down, you disease-infested frequenter of whores, I was coming to HELP you! Could just as easily….” Kite struggled to clear his throat without coughing, making hoarse, disgusting gurgling sound. “Hkk… uchkt. Could just as easily have stung you, and you’d STILL be lying here instead of me. Fires,” he muttered, still trying to push phlegm out of his throat, “I could just as easily have left you.”

Vaeyinn’s jaw worked thoughtfully for a moment as he fixed Kite with a hard stare. “Would you?” he asked with deceptive calm. Kite’s eyes flicked back to him, blazing with anger.

“Sure. Of course I would. I dragged you along all this way because I was just waiting for a chance to get rid of you.” He nearly coughed again, and fought to hold it back, making his voice crack. “Don’t be more of a bastard than you can help,” he wheezed, “I don’t deserve this.”

here are just a few snippets...father "ranting" to 5 yr old son...

“We have to protect ourselves against the darkness, and the only way to do that is to have a purpose. Men without purpose are rotters. They are useless, shiftless, wastes of space, and the Shadow Man will get each and every one of them. And where does he take them Benny-boy? What does the Shadow Man do with these poor excuses for men?”
“He takes them to the dark places,” Benny said.
“That’s right. To the dark places behind the shadows. And what happens there?”
“The teeth,” Benny said. He remembered his lessons well.
“The gnashing of teeth, Benny-boy. The endless everloving gnashing of teeth. Find a purpose, kiddo, and don’t let anyone ever keep you from it, or the Shadow Man will find you. He’ll take everything you ever loved and he’ll chew it up. He will destroy you.”

30 yrs later, the ghost of the father is back....

“Of course you were terrified of me! You were useless since the day they pulled you from your mother’s womb! You went from your mother’s tit to your wife’s. You’re a coward, you always have been. You attacked that cop from behind like a coward.” Robert rose and took a few shaky steps forward, towering over Ben. “Just like you did to me.”
“What are you talking about?” Ben leapt to his feet, wishing this had come out less like a shriek.
“You hid behind a door, Benny-boy, with my everloving gun, like a f***ing coward!”

and a little later (this is still the father; he's an angry guy)...

“You never had a chance. You really aren’t so different from me. Maybe you were able to hide a little longer than I did, but your true nature found you just the same. The Shadow Man, and all his hounds of hell have come for you. They found you, and they are going to eat you alive. You’re dead, Benny-boy, you just don’t know it yet.”

Here's my MC, a Pakistani Muslim girl named Nura, upset when someone is talking about her late little sister who left Islam right before she died.

"I know about the dream. She wrote about it in detail in her journal." Nura said.

"So you know about the crossroads she stood at. You can see how Allah was working in her life."

Nura's temper flared up. "How Allah was working in her life? How can you say that? How can you even say His name? Jamila was the greatest servant Allah ever had and you turned her out of the right path!"

The girl remained calm, almost as if she expected this kind of outburst. "I can understand how you feel. For whatever its worth I can guarantee that she found mercy."

Nura felt like slapping this woman across the face. "Guarantee? You guarantee she found mercy? Are you trying to mock me? How could you ever say something like that to me? I go through sleepless nights because I wonder where my sister is right now and you just sit there and give me your personal guarantee that she found mercy? Who do you think you are? Do you have eyes of God that can see into the next world? Don't you dare sit there and guarantee anything about my sister. You're a kafr and you turned my sister into one!" Nura was shaking and on the verge of tears. Throughout all this the girl was calm and didn't seem to notice the people staring at them. She reached out with her hand and touched Nura's clasped fist resting on the table.

"I know how you feel."

"You have no fucking clue how I feel." Nura breathed out with clenched teeth. She quickly regretted her profanity. She had never used that word in public before and it struck her as funny, in a strange, tense way. It even calmed her down, just a little. The girl nodded and pulled her hand back.

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This was a fun thread, gotta join in

A little swearing.



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"I demand to be made knowledgeable of your conversation," Hepaten's voice cut through the room in De Vhatic.


[FONT=Courier, monospace]Arthur obliged and translated. The obvious reaction followed, and when Hepaten started to bellow a repetition of the threats he had earlier delivered in an almost civil tone Arthur had had enough.[/FONT]

[FONT=Courier, monospace]He drew his gun and put the muzzle to the ministerial face. "This is an outworlder weapon. Do you understand?"[/FONT]

[FONT=Courier, monospace]Behind him Erwin gasped, but Arthur also sensed Mairild holding the admiral back.[/FONT]

[FONT=Courier, monospace]Hepaten stood absolutely still. He did raise one hand in acknowledgment. Very slowly.[/FONT]

[FONT=Courier, monospace]"It fires something we call needle grenades. One shot will take off your head and most of your upper abdomen. Am I clear?"[/FONT]

[FONT=Courier, monospace]The hand came up again.[/FONT]

[FONT=Courier, monospace]"I'm a taleweaver. I can do this and if anyone tries to kill me for it this city will be reduced to ashes. Is that correct?"[/FONT]

[FONT=Courier, monospace]It took a little longer for the hand to rise, but it did.[/FONT]

[FONT=Courier, monospace]"Then get your gherin spawned dick out of here and plug it into one of your thugs! Dismissed!"[/FONT]
[FONT=Courier, monospace]------------------------------------------------[/FONT]


[FONT=Courier, monospace]Sten
[/FONT]

OK, I'll play. This scene is one of the very few times in my whole fantasy series where my hero really loses his temper. Basically, they're on a quest to get an object which will save the world at some distant future date, but getting to this object requires them to go back to a place where something really terrible happened to the hero's wife earlier in the series. His wife is completely freaking out about returning to that place. In this scene, he tells his warrior sister that they're not going (the quest can't be completed without them).


“So you’re just giving up?” Rose nearly shouted.

Jack looked up. “I don’t really want to give up, but I honestly don’t want to keep goin’ either.” He shrugged. “That doesn’t leave me much ammunition to try t’ change her mind.”

“You are coming with me, Jack. If I have to chain both of you to the damn sled!”

“No, Rose, I’m not. There’s no reason to. Me an’ Arkadia don’t need th’ Orb in order to destroy Tempestua. That’s all I care about.”

“What about saving the whole damn world?” she shouted.

He stepped closer to her. “What world would that be, Rose? Th’ same world that threw me an’ Arkadia away like trash, that calls us criminals, that lets six-year-old children be sold as sex slaves? That world?”

“Whether you like Eterna or not, it’s the only world we’ve got, and it’s one hell of a lot better than none!”

He shook his head. “Don’t you dare tell me you give a damn about this world! You just want to be remembered in th’ history books as th’ savior of us all, mightiest heroine on all of Eterna.”

“Stop acting like a spoiled two-year-old! This isn’t about you, or Arkadia, or even me! This is about Destiny. How many times have you said Destiny cannot be denied? You don’t have to like your Destiny, but, damn it to the deepest Hells, you are going to fulfill it!”

“Or what?” He stepped closer to her. “I fulfill my Destiny or what? Destiny will strike me dead? Oh, wait, they already tried that!” He stepped towards the door. “Damn Destiny, damn all th’ gods an’ goddesses, damn th’ world to a fate they well deserve! Me an’ Arkadia are finished! Finished!” He slammed the heavy metal door before Rose could make a no-doubt venomous comeback.

Ooh, I'll give you a two-for-one. Identical twins. Ranting at each other.

Total language warning.

“No, stop it! Stop freaking out! What the fuck did you lose, Sash, nothing! You lost nothing. Everything you need is inside this goddamn car. Stop this, now. It’s offensive.”

“Shut up, shut up!” I wrung my hands. “Damn it, just leave me alone! Like you’re the goddamn authority on how to deal. Go shove your fingers down your throat. I don’t fucking care.”

“Stop it. God. God.”

“Oh, what?”

“You always do this!” He hitched his good foot onto the dashboard and pulled his leg into his chest. “All the fucking time. You just take things, things you shouldn’t be allowed to fucking use in an argument and you just throw them in my face. You’re such a bastard, God.”

“Are you kidding me? I do...I take care of you all the goddamn time. You’re the one who uses ‘I love you’s’ as an excuse to treat people like shit. Just like you’re using your status as Cody’s goddamn fuck-buddy to justify--”

“Sasha!” He threw up his hands. “You see what you’re doing? You’re throwing shit in my face while I’m like, grieving. That doesn’t seem like an asshole thing to do?”

I pointed at him. “What are you doing with me, huh?”

“You’re not grieving!”

“Yes, I am!”

“No! This isn’t yours! You didn’t know Cody. You weren’t close with Mom! You’re just taking these!”

“Oh, so this is about Mom, huh? And I’m not close with her, why, because I didn’t trade suicide tips?”

It ended.

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Enough to bring tears to one's eyes?

JoNightshade said:

He ripped the drawer open, grabbed the dildo, and slammed it on the desk. “This hurts. Okay?...

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This is a fun thread-

A brief set up- MC, Dakota has been sought after because of his amazing immune system. An undergorund, illegal research team has finally found him and they intend to waste no time.
Bad word warning

“It’s very curious, Doctor. I was hoping you could elaborate on the experiments the army conducted on you.”

“I have a better idea. Why don’t you go to hell and leave me the fuck alone.”

The General smiled inside his plastic shield. “Well, we can always find out for ourselves. I thought I would offer you a chance to avoid unnecessary pain.”

Dakota opened his eyes. If this General was anything like McKinley, he knew he would have no problems living up to that promise. Pain was something Dakota could live with out. But the question confused him.

“Look, I don’t know what the hell you want from me that you can’t just take. I can’t stop you. Okay? I get that! I fucking hate that! I fucking hate you – but I get that.” Little black dots starting to swim in front of his eyes at the outburst and Dakota chose to ignore them. “You already hacked into my files, so you probably know more than I do. I only know they were working on creating a vaccine to avian influenza. Your bud, McKinley already exposed me to it two years ago.” Dakota’s voice lost a little of it’s venom and he had to close his eyes once more as the room started to swim around him. “Jesus, can’t you people just leave me alone?” There was a tone of begging in his voice that Dakota hated, but one he couldn’t take back. His mind played back to the one moment of freedom he could remember in the last two years. Straddling Montana’s Harley, with the throttle pulled back. No one knowing who he was -- where he was. In the wind. He would have given anything to get that moment back. As he slipped back into sleep despite the General’s nagging questions and thinly veiled threats of torture, one thought kept repeating itself. If he ever had the chance at freedom again, no one was ever going to take it from him.

A snarl set into my jaws, I shot Zalsor a glare. “We do not boil everything. Prawns these size; I’d make an incision in the shell along the back and peel it off carefully, taking care to leave the legs intact. Then I’d cut it into segments and carefully arrange them on a platter in the prawn’s original shape, the head slightly apart from the rest of the prawn. The rest of the prawns get the same treatment and are laid beside their fellow on the platter.

“Then you get a freshly caught tilapia taken from the water no more than a watch ago, shake it dry, slice open its belly and let its juices drizzle onto the prawns. Please note that I’m simplifying a very complex process. You then gather the rest of the brood around the platter, give thanks to the Sentinels with a little more emphasis on the Dragonmother, and start eating, taking no more than one segment at a time. There’s a whole set of rules for partaking of this dish, but I won’t go into the details of that.”

Zalsor stared at me, one-eye half-closed, and I knew what was going through her mind. “You made that up.”

I reeled in another prawn, and cast out the line again. “When you get the chance, try asking any Green from the Therkass region about how prawns this size should be prepared.”

“And what do you do with smaller prawns?”

By now, I had to struggle not to laugh. “Why, we just put them into a big pot with everything else, boil the lot and shovel the steaming mess into our jaws.”

The rants I write are usually triggered by the silliest of situations, and at most, last about 3/4 of a page. (with some interaction with other characters throughout)