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31 Plays in 31 Days, #4 - "Make it Good"
Aug. 4th, 2015 07:12 amAs I mentioned in my entry for day #1, my conception of certain things in the Adonis sequels has evolved since I tried scribbling out ideas for them last year. Since I'm collaborating on these with Bernie, he gets equal input on the directions we take, and it works because when I run my thoughts by him, he's able to give a perspective that is different than I have but still constructive to my process.
I talked about Saturnina, the commander of the Roman armies fighting to stop the rebellion, who is the primary big bad of the next part of the story. But I don't know if I've talked much about Pavilla, the other important villain. In the first Adonis, the empress's Dragon is Livia Janaria Pavo Gothica, a successful general ten or twelve years older than Diana. Pavilla is her daughter, Livia Janaria Pavo the Younger, raised to believe it was her destiny to ascend to the reins of power in the empire. That meant that she could stand as the representation of the destructive nature of entitlement that I wanted in the story, which was initially an idea for Saturnina but which Bernie talked me out of.
Following from that, I really want Pavilla to then stand for Aidan as a force of dehumanization. But again Bernie balked at the idea of her actually having a history of abusing him personally. He still found it too coincidental that a big bad happened to randomly encounter him years before, and he didn't like the idea of too completely embodying "Aidan's rape trauma" in a person-- Bernie felt that implied that destroying that person would be the way to destroy/move past the trauma. "We don't want to suggest that sort of issue can be killed with a sword," he said, which is a pretty damn good point.
I still want to do something with the notion that Pavilla's monstrous entitlement is a legitimate threat to Aidan, and her absolute objectifcation of him gives her that psychological edge over him. Maybe the way to do it is her developing an obsession with owning him in particular as the war wages, without any previous history. I'm not sure what would be most effective.
But here is a scene depicting kind of what I was imagining, a flashback. It probably won't be useful because it includes the history I don't think we're including anymore. But it kind of explains the sort of person Pavilla is. Mild adult content advisory.
( Day #4 )
I talked about Saturnina, the commander of the Roman armies fighting to stop the rebellion, who is the primary big bad of the next part of the story. But I don't know if I've talked much about Pavilla, the other important villain. In the first Adonis, the empress's Dragon is Livia Janaria Pavo Gothica, a successful general ten or twelve years older than Diana. Pavilla is her daughter, Livia Janaria Pavo the Younger, raised to believe it was her destiny to ascend to the reins of power in the empire. That meant that she could stand as the representation of the destructive nature of entitlement that I wanted in the story, which was initially an idea for Saturnina but which Bernie talked me out of.
Following from that, I really want Pavilla to then stand for Aidan as a force of dehumanization. But again Bernie balked at the idea of her actually having a history of abusing him personally. He still found it too coincidental that a big bad happened to randomly encounter him years before, and he didn't like the idea of too completely embodying "Aidan's rape trauma" in a person-- Bernie felt that implied that destroying that person would be the way to destroy/move past the trauma. "We don't want to suggest that sort of issue can be killed with a sword," he said, which is a pretty damn good point.
I still want to do something with the notion that Pavilla's monstrous entitlement is a legitimate threat to Aidan, and her absolute objectifcation of him gives her that psychological edge over him. Maybe the way to do it is her developing an obsession with owning him in particular as the war wages, without any previous history. I'm not sure what would be most effective.
But here is a scene depicting kind of what I was imagining, a flashback. It probably won't be useful because it includes the history I don't think we're including anymore. But it kind of explains the sort of person Pavilla is. Mild adult content advisory.
( Day #4 )
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