characters

the golden

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ 4 Comments

Most characters get their own character pages, but there is no way to talk about Craig, Will, and Sharon Golden separately.

They go to the same school as Ron, who says that she likes Will and finds the other two "stuck up." This makes her about the only person who can tell the three siblings apart. If they are siblings.

Little is known about the Golden. They are called that because they use the surname, but also because their skin is a strange golden color. It goes well with their blond hair and gray eyes, but the overall effect is rather unnatural.

Comic books teach us that those who are peculiar looking and mysterious also have special powers, but there is no evidence that this is true of the Golden. Their main goal seems to be to blend in with the other teenagers around them, to be normal, but they're not very good at it.

The Golden first appeared in "The Golden Mystery," appropriately enough. They are also in the stories, "The Mystery of the Quiet People" and "Michael."

Also a word on names, especially since Sonje over at sonjejones.com was just talking about naming characters in this post.

The Golden are somewhat inspired by three characters called The Golden from the late, lamented comic book The Establishment. Those characters are quite different, since the comic-book Golden were very powerful superheroes, quite a bit older than our characters, and they looked similar to each other but not identical.

The comic-book Golden were named Alex, Stuart, and Will, after the actors in the British television show The Champions (who the comic-book characters were somewhat based on). In that show, Alexandra Bastedo, Stuart Damon, and William Gaunt played Sharron Macready, Craig Sterling, and Richard Barrett, so I called my characters Sharon, Craig, and Will (for symmetry it should have been Richard or Rick or Dick, but those didn't seem right so I went with Will).

To go further into pop culture history, the look of The Golden (both groups) were inspired by the children in Village of the Damned, a movie which was based in turn on the book The Midwich Cuckoos, which also influenced the characters The Stepford Cuckoos in the X-Men comics, sisters (originally five, now down to three) who share telepathic powers and, to some extent, a common mind.

However, as I say, all of the characters named above are very powerful, which is apparently not true of The Golden.

fifteen

~ Anthony Lee Collins

As I was preparing this entry, I was surprised, I admit, to realize how often Fifteen has appeared in the novels and stories, though he has never really been a "major character." His real name has never been revealed, and there is not much information about what he does when he is not "on duty" (either as a runner, or as a roadie for Kingdom Come, or as an all-purpose aide to Doc and the others).

Fifteen is young (though probably by now a bit older than his nickname). He usually dresses in shorts and an ancient T-shirt (depending on the weather), and his head is usually shaved.

He does not appear in A Sane Woman.


u-town

We first see him in the fourth chapter, "Prove It (Just the Facts)." He comes into The Quarter and describes the shootout that happened in Chapter Two, "A Quiet Night at Duffy's" (which he witnessed from a safe distance).

In Chapter Seven, "starling," we find out that he has (unsuccessfully) been trying to get Christy from the Jinx to go out with him.

He appears many more times in the novel, mostly as a roadie for the band Kingdom Come, and sometimes as a runner. In Chapter Nine, "Curse the Darkness," we find out that he's T.C.'s nephew (or, as she puts it, niece). He is Pete's friend, and Pete finds out in Chapter Thirteen, "The Forces at Work (Part One)" just how good a friend he is.


the mystery stories

Fifteen appears quite a few times in the mystery stories. His first appearance is in the vampire case, where he and Christy are very central to solving the mystery.

In the college case, we see his semi-friendly rivalry with Ron.


the third novel

Fifteen's first appearance in the third novel is in the chapter "On the Medical Team," where he appears in his new function as an all-purpose aide to Doc and the others.

In the next chapter, "Quartet," we find out that he is still friends with Pete and Katherine, helping Pete while he is laid up.

In "Distance and Time," SarahBeth expresses some disbelief about Fifteen and Christy, and Katherine reveals some history which was implied but never explained in detail.

christy

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

Christine Malin is an alcoholic single mother.

I start that way because it is a true statement, but it can also be very misleading, since many people have a lot of prejudices about those categories.

Christy is a member of the Jinx, a large and rather mysterious motorcycle gang. She is as tough as any other member of the Jinx when she has to be, but she is otherwise, as Marshall says, rather prim and proper. She can always be spotted easily in any large gathering of Jinx, not only by her bright red hair but also because she is the only Jinx who wears skirts.

She does not appear in A Sane Woman.

In U-town, we first meet her in Chapter Six, "One Night at the Quarter," where we see her begin to develop a bit of a crush on Marshall. This will develop over the next few chapters. It's destined to fail, of course, if only because Marshall and his employer are quite expert at sabotaging each other's romances.

And then Christy and Marshall each end up with someone else, so any possible romance between them has fizzled out before it ever got going.

But there's still a friendship, and a bit of an attraction, but nothing happens. Which is quite common in real life but is almost never shown in fiction, where every extra-marital impulse, especially if mutual, is sure to be acted on sooner or later.

But here it plays out as it often does in life. All four people are aware of it, nobody gets bent out of shape, Marshall gets teased from time to time, and life goes on.

And of course the one person who doesn't understand all this is Ron, because she's young, and because of her history, and because she's probably seen movies or TV shows where it did (supposedly inevitably) go the other way. And it's Christy (far more experienced at being a parent) who points this out here, and then Marshall has to clear things up with Ron here.

In the mystery stories, Christy appears first in the vampire case, where she plays a big role. Then in some of the later stories she acts as security for Jan Sleet and Marshall when they travels outside U-town.

susan tumolo

~ Anthony Lee Collins

Susan Tumolo was introduced in the story "Carly." Her first appearance was in Part Four. She was the secretary of Mayor Mike Sheldon (known as "Uncle Mike"). After his wife died of cancer, there were rumors in the tabloids about Hizzoner having an affair with his very attractive secretary, but nobody ever produced any evidence. As usual, the newspapers which favored the administration ignored the whole thing, and the papers which favored the opposition party dropped hints whenever they could.

After Uncle Mike disappeared, Miss Tumolo unexpectedly showed up in U-town to warn Doc, Jack, and Ray of a plot against their lives. And then, even more unexpectedly, she decided to stay on in U-town and become a teacher in the school. Jan and Marshall met her there during the school case and the golden mystery.

Despite her attitude of stern disapproval during both of those case, she later brought the mystery of the four women to their attention.

ron

~ Anthony Lee Collins

Ron is the adopted daughter of Jan Sleet and Marshall. She is around twelve years old.

For a long time, they just thought of her as "that loud, obnoxious girl who delivers our mail." Beyond that, nobody knew much about the rest of Ron's life. Did she have family in the area, did she ever go to school, where did she sleep, and how did she eat? Nobody knew. And, it must be said, nobody thought about it very much.

Her first appearance in the mystery stories was in the vampire case, where she made a brief appearance, delivering a very important piece of mail.

But then, during the college case, Ron got into some serious trouble, and Jan Sleet managed to get her out of it. In the course of that case, Jan Sleet revealed that she had investigated Ron. She knew that Ron had run away from her parents and they had reported her missing, but that they had apparently made no other effort to find her or get her back. When Jan Sleet had called them, they had apparently been completely willing to let their 12-year-old daughter live with complete strangers, at least as long as they could tell themselves that she was in good hands.

Then, at the end of the college case, she had started to refer to Jan and Marshall as "Mom" and "Dad." To her surprise, and to everybody else's, they went along with this, adopting her as their daughter.

As parents, Jan Sleet and Marshall are somewhat unusual. For one thing, they have no idea where their daughter sleeps. They did insist that she attend school, though only on a part-time basis because of her postal responsibilities. Ron persuaded them to move a second desk into their bedroom. This made it fairly crowded, but it meant she could work on her homework with them in the evenings.

The great detective's urge is generally to investigate everything (or at least to be as nosy as possible), but Marshall convinced her to resist poking around in Ron's history, or at least when the only purpose is satisfying her own curiosity. However, she is keeping her eyes open, and making deductions based on what she sees.

Here are the conclusions she has come to so far:

  • Ron was abused growing up.

  • She was also, and probably more often, neglected.

  • Her parents came to the city for a vacation, bringing Ron, and that's when Ron ran away. This was at least partly to get them to chase her, to demonstrate concern.

  • Which they didn't do. They reported her missing, finished their vacation, and went home.

Many children, in that situation, would have run back to their parents, chastened, but not Ron. She was both proud and resourceful, and she decided to figure out how to live on her own.

Somehow she learned about U-town, or stumbled into it accidentally, and when she came over the bridge she saw the daily mail delivery (as described here). Seeing how casually it was all handled, she stepped in and began to organize the young runners who were (mis)handling it. Then, hearing about the mail for the informal committee that ran U-town (the "big fish," as the runners called them), she decided to handle this part of the process herself.

Before Ron took this over, their mail delivery had been rather erratic, and this had caused a few problems with legal documents and diplomatic communications, as well as personal and family mail.

Ron may have had a somewhat abrasive personality, and a voice which could be loud and annoying, but nobody could deny that she was dedicated and efficient.

Ron appears in all of the mystery stories after The College Mystery (some more than others, of course).

Popeye

~ Anthony Lee Collins ~ Leave a comment

I recently watched Robert Altman's movie Popeye again, and from a movie standpoint it has good parts (Robin Williams, Shelly Duvall, Bill Irwin, Richard Libertini, the set design, some of the songs) and not so good parts (some of the other songs, the ending), but it also made me think of a couple of my characters.

One was Vicki. It was deliberate, especially in U-town, that she would be very much like Popeye. Stronger than anybody else, but not liking to use her strength unless she had no other choice ("I've had all I can stands, I can't stands no more!"). And also in how centered she is, how sure of who and what she is ("I yam what I am an' tha's all what I yam."). She comes to U-town, where she doesn't know anybody, and she is comfortable keeping a little distance between herself and most of the people she meets. She doesn't want to join a clique or a gang, she is quite comfortable on her own.

The other person I thought of was Daphne, for a very different reason. E.C. Segar originally created a strip called "Thimble Theater," centered around Olive Oyl, her brother Castor, and her boyfriend Ham Gravy. Then, for one sequence involving an ocean trip, a sailor character called Popeye was introduced. He wasn't intended to continue beyond that specific storyline, but he caught on with the audience, and eventually became the central character, to the extent that the strip is now mostly known as "Popeye."

When Daphne was first introduced here, she was supposed to be a walk-on character, an amusing indication of Carl's preferences and enthusiasms ("Think of the advantages," he says to Pete about having a dog in the apartment). But, of course, she lasted far beyond that sequence, and now I'm thinking she might be a (if not the) major character in the next book (if and when I ever finish this one, of course).

Well, even if I decide she will be the central character in the next book, it could go in a very different direction anyway. I thought this one was going to be about SarahBeth, and a lot of it was, but now in these chapters she's mostly offstage.