How Lizzie Began
You know, I’m really a sweetheart. I don’t like confrontation, arguments, disagreements. I much prefer a Zen-like calm, hard as it is to find. Just like Lizzie Fortune, I like to find a peaceful common ground with the minimum of fuss. So I took the character that the others didn’t want.
Dee, the oldest sister, was already set. She was the nucleus of the idea, Eileen had her, and that was that. Jenny’s a born rebel, and it seemed perfect that she would take the rebellious young one, Mare. And I’m a middle child and a peacemaker, so I was left with the middle sister, Lizzie.
First came her gift. I claimed alchemy for the shallowest of reasons. I’d been watching a Japanese anime series (Full Metal Alchemist) on tv with my daughter and helping her with the fine-points of costume-making. Having a fondness for all things Japanese, particularly male, I decided to go with alchemy, and even named my hero after the show.
So what to do next?
Jenny needed a visual, because she works visually, and I knew Lizzie was blonde-haired and seemingly spacey. “Like Meg Ryan before all the plastic surgery?” Jenny said. Krissie whimpered and said “well, maybe.” So Jenny got to use an early Meg Ryan picture in her collage and never found out that my Lizzie actually looks more like Cate Blanchett (I didn’t have the heart to make her change her collage).
I’m not used to working with other people, and neither is Lizzie. She desperately wants to make gold to solve her family’s woes — if there’s enough money then Dee won’t have to work at a job she hates and rebellious Mare won’t have to do what Dee wants her to do and Lizzie won’t ever have to think about magic again, which has caused the Fortune sisters nothing but trouble. So she hides in her workshop and tries to turn straw into gold, taking care of the house like Cinderella and falling in love with a powerful wizard as she begins to discover the extent of her own remarkable powers.
We didn’t plan it that way. It started out that Lizzie was, in fact, the weak link. She was the peacemaker, the recluse, shy and sweet and innocent, while Dee and Mare ruled the universe. But as the story unfolded, Lizzie became more and more powerful, until it became clear that in fact, if any of the Fortune sisters could rule the world, it was Lizzie.
Which was kind of cool, when you think about it. While Eileen’s Dee storms around trying to take care of everything, and Jenny’s Mare storms around being Queen of the Universe, quiet little Lizzie is the real power.
You gotta watch out for the quiet ones.
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Cate Blanchett??? No wonder Krissie knew all along how powerful Lizzie was while we were blithely working under the assumption she was such a delicate flower. Sneaky. Sneaky.
Eileen
You gotta watch out for the quiet ones.
I LOVE this idea! There is something very compelling in a story about the supposed underdog who comes into their own. I love it, I just freak’n love it!
I would like to point out that Mare must have known because about two thirds of the way through I wrote this:
“Mare thought about telling her that rules were for the little people, but given the scope of Lizzie’s powers, that could lead to mushroom clouds and planet-sized charcoal briquettes . . .”
But I’m still gob-smacked by Cate Blanchett. The things you find out when you read your own blog.
Off to glue a new picture on the collage.
and falling in love with a powerful wizard
That’s the sentence that grabbed me. Can’t wait to meet this guy.
FMA! during finals i got caught in the world of YouTube (study? huh?) and discovered full episodes of FMA. great stuff. can’t find it anymore though, which bummed me out. going to have to rent the season soon….
always practicing, makes sense to me that she would end up the strongest.
and now i’m curious about if she manages to and what she has to give up to get it and which of the alchemy rules your using and, and…*sigh* just to let you all know, it is definitely working. you have me hooked.
So she hides in her workshop and tries to turn straw into gold,
Does she have long (really long) hair ? Is it blond ?
Isn’t it great when you run with an idea and it turns into something so much more than you thought it would ever be? I love the fact that you got the sister “no one else wanted” and she ends up being “more”! Very sweet.
jill: immediately after i read your last line i began to think “and does this wizard have a nickname no one remembers and is very hard to spell but it starts with an r?”