Friday, May 6, 2016

Foul Mouth Facts: Pocket, Jesus, and Raj

1.  The name Raj means King/Prince.  Along with Jesus being the King of Kings these are hardly the only characters in the series with princely or royal names.

2.  The Pocket nickname actually comes from the most convoluted in-joke imaginable, involving the author's high school DND group and a character called Patch Thimblefinger finding out he had an illegitimate son called Pocket during one of their adventures.  It was an instant classic.

3.  Many of their DND characters would go on to find a place in the author's failed college attempt at epic fantasy called the The First Lie, including the thief turned dragonslayer Wistler Larakin and the son of an empress and knight without peer, Darkan Godsglare.

4.  While it is never likely to see the light of day, The First Lie took place in a world where dragons ruled, a complete reverse of The King Henry Tapes.  Overlords ruling mankind is a theme that will be seen in many of the author's future novels.

5.  Raj is one of the few characters to be named and to find a place in the series based on a person from the author's life.  Real life Raj moved away in high school but will forever be remembered for saying "be nice" at every possible opportunity.

6.  The Pocket and Jesus relationship was decided on while the author was working on FM2, hence the many mentions of Fauna/Floro being a common pairing, Pocket's hesitancy at finding a date for the Winter Ball and many other hints in earlier books.

7.  To fight tropes and stereotypes, both Jesus and Pocket where given masculine personalities and masculine, physical jobs as search and rescue FIND agents.  The author also purposely left their relationship for FM5 so the reader could know them as characters, attemping to prevent any tokenism.

8.  The original FM2 beginning that was scraped started with Pocket and King Henry packing for the Camp Test and having a conversation about socks and whether 3 singular socks over two pairs wasn't preferred to save space.  Probably why it got cut and replaced...

9.  Jesus was Jose very early in the series work.

10.  Pocket coming from Pismo and his small business family comes from the author's many coastal trips during his youth and familiarity with these type of families.

11.  Raj has six siblings and is smart enough to have never let King Henry meet his sisters.

12. King Henry has met Pocket's 5 older sisters.  Pocket regrets it very much.

13.  Raj was to be a main part of two school tapes, now cut to finish the school tapes by FM7 and save the author some sanity.

14.  Those tapes revolved around Raj's romance and indeed finally winning a date and a romantic night from Miranda.  It didn't go so well...some dreams are better than reality.

15.  Raj supplied the anima for King Henry's first artifact, the Cold Cuffs prototype, made during Hex and behind Plutarch's back.

16.  Session 7 in FM1 was terrifying for the author, setting up character personalities that wouldn't be fully introduced for two more books.  Broken timelines, don't try it, kiddies.

17.  Pocket's physical description vaguely mirrors adventure hero Dirk Pitt, a favorite of the author's aunt and mother.

18.  Raj, his job at Hunting Cryotech and Project Cassandra will be a major plot point in a future novel.


2 comments:

  1. Thanks. No major shocks I guess, apart from your high school DND group being immortalized along with the usual rubbish names :)

    I think you did a great job with the Pocket/Jesus relationship; the affectionate teasing was very nicely done.

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  2. Ok now i need to read the story of king H meeting pockets sisters

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