Beautiful People #19: Stefan

I seem to be taking a lot of unplanned blogging hiatuses lately. This last one was due to the combination of microbiology and Camp NaNo which apparently forms a kind of schedule that allows for basically nothing else. But I am back! (Hopefully without any other unplanned hiatuses soon? Because microbiology and Camp NaNo will be scrambling up all my time until the end of the month.)

"So!" you ask. "Since you have abandoned us for Camp NaNo, you can at least give us an update on your writing!" (Of course you want to know this. If you don't, you should.)

My writing has been going pretty well, actually, and SlavicNovel is promising to be at least 75k long, considering that I am currently around 30k of my rewrite and I am most certainly not halfway through. It'll probably end up 100k in the end. (And dang, do I have an epic ending planned. I am so excited to write that climax, since it didn't exist in draft 1.)  I think I've finally figured out which ships sail and which ships sink, so that's great. (Also, many of my ships are CharacterXThemself, so yeah...)

In terms of characters, Tanya is getting less constantly obnoxiously immature, and is simply immature, with sporadic occurrences of obnoxiousness. In other words, she's just where I want her at this point.

Laryssa (my mermaid? do you remember her? I should feature her one of these days) has become a full blown Character, instead of the shell she was in the earlier drafts, and has earned her own POV.

Stefan, my darling grinning* prince, has become far more fascinating, and has earned a POV of his own as well.
*grinning boys in books are my downfall so of course I decided to create one.

Baba Yaga continues on her morally-ambiguous, snarky, fabulous way.

Who do we choose to feature for this month's Beautiful People? I think Stefan's the man for the job, no? I haven't introduced him to you lovelies yet, have I.

1. Do they want to get married and/or have children? Why or why not?
Theoretically, Stefan does want to get married and have children. Eventually. A long time from now.
Marriage is a little more present in his mind than children, since he is a prince after all, though not the heir. He knows that he might end up marrying some princess or another to benefit political ties, especially since Ivan, the middle brother, married a village girl. But his oldest brother, Luka, isn't yet married either, and he's probably the one who's more likely to be married off anytime soon, so Stefan doesn't mind keeping his romantic endeavors to occasionally kissing pretty girls at royal banquets.

2. What is their weapon of choice? 
Probably the sword - he's been well-trained since childhood - but he'd consider his words to be a decent weapon as well. (Whether they actually are is a different question - the idea of talking his way out of a situation is much more attractive than actually doing it.)

3. What's the nicest thing they've done for someone else, and why did they do it?
Stefan is a nice fellow (if a recent acquaintance had to assign adjectives to the three princes, Luka would be noble, Ivan would be passionate, and Stefan would probably be nice). To be nice doesn't mean a lot - it doesn't mean as much as to be kindhearted, or chivalrous (or noble or passionate for that matter). So if you asked Stefan what the nicest thing he's ever done for someone, he'd immediately school his face into the face he presents at royal banquets when introducing himself to foreign ambassadors and tell you some irrelevant story that he may have just made up on the spot.

But really? The really nicest thing he's done - as in most kindhearted, chivalrous, noble thing - is probably something he does over the course of SlavicNovel, and that is befriend Tanya. He would tell you that it was entirely selfish - he was fascinated by her, he found her to be a good person (under her prickles) - but really, it takes effort to be friends with someone convinced that they were cursed with friendlessness. Good job, Stefanchick.

4. Have they ever been physically violent with someone, and what instigated it?
He's a prince, trained in fighting, so yes. Also, he's a boy, with two older brothers, so yes.

5. Are they a rule-follower or a rebel?
Stefan is a rule-follower who thinks he's a rebel.

6. Are they organized or messy?
Depends. He thinks he's organized in everything, and in home life, where he's comfortable and safe, he is pretty organized. But dang, does he have a tendency to fall into situations that cause a mess, and after a while, it makes organization difficult. But he tries. He really does.

7. What makes them feel loved, and who was the last person to make them feel that way?
Someone laughing at his jokes and acknowledging his desires and dreams. I suppose it's been a good couple years since he's really felt like that, since his brothers are both now in worlds of their own, when before they were kind of an inseparable trio. Darn adulthood.


8. What do they eat for breakfast?
Eggs and toast and ham and butter and coffee (imported from the country south of them*).

*none of my countries have names yet. oops.

9. Have they ever lost someone close to them? What happened?
When Stefan's mother died, he was only six years old, so it didn't impact him as much as it did his older brothers. But I suppose that's one example. Beyond that, he's really had a good life, as good as life can be for a youngest prince. :-P

10. What's their treat of choice? (Or, if not food, how else do they reward themselves?)
Excuse me (thinks Stefan) is there another way to reward oneself if not with food? From chocolate, to fresh buns surreptitiously nabbed from the kitchens, to potato pierogies with fried onions and sour cream, to kolatchkies filled with strawberry jam... Stefan can dream about food for years. (And eat it too, being a prince with kitchens that have access across the country.)

So that's my Stefan! I really like him, and I hope you did too!

Are you doing Camp NaNo? How's your writing coming along? And please tell me I'm not the only one who always falls for the grinner in books :-P