Unicorn
Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 7:05 pmA quick sketch of a character who has been in my head for a while:
I haven’t been able to write a story about him yet, though I’ve blackened quite a lot of paper trying. I know he lives in a crumbling old castle by the sea called Castle Orpheus and has more than one past. I think he has some connection with Franz Marc, the artist, best known for his Expressionist paintings of horses, who died in World War One of a wound to the head while riding on horseback. Perhaps he is another one of those characters who is resistant to regular narrative. He was partly inspired by the minotaur in Jeff Ford’s Cosmology of the Wider World, and partly by the art of Beth Carter.
July 30th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Nice figure, intresting character… Your drawing is very stimulating for the imagination.
July 30th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I once had a dream with a character who was half unicorn. His name was “Mule.”
I think the dream was mostly drawn by Yoshitaka Amano. When is probably why he had a gem in his forehead rather than a horn. And a mostly humanesque face.
July 31st, 2007 at 4:58 am
I have read to much Berserk.
I think of someone with a big sword lopping that horn off.
Althoug it kinda reminds me of the art work from The Sandman.(Vertigo Comics)
July 31st, 2007 at 5:01 am
Le Pendu - Hi! I have a feeling his story is rather sad; I think he starts off happy, like Candide, then bad things happen - which I am perhaps afraid of writing.
Dave - I remember Mule. I really like that name for a half unicorn, too. Mine’s name is Forage, as near as I can make out. There’s at least one other person in the castle, an orangutan called Reason (he was called Raisin when he was little). Reason lives in a tower whose windows look onto a landscape different from the actual one the castle is in, and his teacher wandered off into it and never came back. Since then Reason has been afflicted with melancholy and doubts. He believes his intelligence and sentience may be magically contained in a Fez hat his teacher gave him, and he wrestles with the temptation to take it off and live without the pain of self-knowledge.
I really need to try again to write this as a story.
Colin - I’m afraid something of that sort does befall him. I need a plot that doesn’t include the horn getting lopped off, or I’ll be sad the whole time I’m writing it.
July 31st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Starting happy and finishing sad will perfectly fit for this unicorn-headed Forage. I see him as an innocent, nice guy. But a nice guy with problems.
July 31st, 2007 at 1:59 pm
or have him as a happy sort of a guy but turn him in to a bastard at they end becaue of the world forever buggering him up because of his fez
July 31st, 2007 at 2:25 pm
“Reason lives in a tower whose windows look onto a landscape different from the actual one the castle is in, and his teacher wandered off into it and never came back. Since then Reason has been afflicted with melancholy and doubts. He believes his intelligence and sentience may be magically contained in a Fez hat his teacher gave him, and he wrestles with the temptation to take it off and live without the pain of self-knowledge.”
This story sounds awesome!
July 31st, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Le Pendu - things could get very bad, but I don’t think I could end things sadly for him - I feel very protective of him. But yes, he is a nice guy with problems… this story might be of the “Nice guy gets in heaps of trouble and somehow gets out” kind. But there will have to be a streak of tragedy and real sadness, I think.
Colin - he might go down some dark paths but I don’t think he has it in him to really turn into a bastard, somehow. (Re the Fez, the unicorn man doesn’t have it; the orangutan does).
Laurie - oh, I’m glad you like the sound of it. That makes me feel more confident. I’m pathetic. I have these ideas and I always somehow assume no one will like them.
July 31st, 2007 at 2:46 pm
well he could steal it. No wait he could approipate it that means he steals in an artistic manner.
and he can stomp the ‘Ranga for being short and red headed
August 1st, 2007 at 11:00 am
Colin you a fuck wit