Initial Notes on Allan Hugo

This is intended to be a (hopefully amusing) peek into the character creation process for Allan. I've typed it in straight from my brainstorming in my notebook, embarrassing mistakes and all. Bits in [braces] are post-creation commentary.

• Athene's kid (son? daughter?) [Should be Athena, of course.]
• Crow's kid [Note that I'd played Raven in End of Days, but for some reason confused the name on this entire page of notes.]
• daughter of Crow
  • shapeshifter (crow)
  • jazz singer [I had made Raven the god of jazz musicians, and wanted to carry the tradition on.]
  • techno musician [Not sure exactly where this came from. I remember that one of my early thoughts was that she could speed herself up or slow herself down as necessary, and I was picturing fingers flying across the keyboard.]
  • computer hacker [I'd originally wanted Raven to be the god of hackers, but forgot that during the End of Days character creation process.]
  • looks like Dawn [An extremely lovely childhood friend of my sister's, who was of American Indian descent. I'd actually had Raven look Celtic (legend has him being white skinned, I believe), so her human parent was going to be Indian.]
  • dresses conservatively [Not sure where this came from, but I latter justified it as a habit picked up from old, seasoned jazz session musicians.]
  • has two fathers? [In the sense that Raven had been female when she was born -- those damned tricksters.]
  • bass player? [I loved the image of a slight woman manipulating the huge instrument.]
  • technological trickery [This apparent defining characteristic was the last thing I thought of...]

At that point, I had a vivid and appealing picture of the daughter of Raven. So how did she become Allan Hugo? Well, the game was listed as a "live action" game. In person, I'm pretty obviously not a petite female, and I want to have the other players suffering that odd character/player confusion that I'd felt before myself in these sort of situations. So I reluctantly gave up on the notion of playing Raven's daughter.

Looking like Dawn was then dropped for obvious reasons. The bass playing notion I dropped just because it seemed unnecessary. When I said "computer hacker", I was actually thinking "cracker". That notion faded some, and ending up migrating more to a proper hacker in the favorable sense -- Allan's a tinkerer.

The name Allan Hugo didn't come about from my usual process of raiding myths and legends. I actually scanned my parents' set of great books; "Hugo" is from Victor Hugo. I couldn't find a first name I liked that way, but I then thought of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". "Edgar" and "Poe" would have been too obvious, but "Allan" was perfect. (Allan's lady friend Ellen Robinson is from my bookshelf -- Ellen Kushner and Kim Stanley Robinson.)

I then brainstormed exactly what technological trickery would do. I fleshed out the basic character ideas, like the fact that he loves jazz but has a day job engineering other people's music. Finally I wrote up his history, adding a lot of bits that sounded right as I went.