I know that I basically already covered Calder, but here we are again, I suppose. It's gonna be hard to keep from repeating myself because, yep, I still don't like Calder and the reasons why have not changed. I still can't go into detail about his past, but I guess I have to say something on this challenge. Sigh.
Here's the deal with Calder: he reminds me a lot of my ex-husband. He's manipulative, secretive, selfish, and all around just kind of a dick. He likes to cook (and is occasionally good at it*) and has no problem whatsoever with using people for his own ends. Granted, I didn't know that I was writing a character that embodied the man who emotionally and verbally abused me for our now-seven-year marriage, but I'm starting to think it was my psyche's way of processing what my conscious mind hadn't yet grasped.
Art is a very weird thing, erupting in weird ways and bringing out parts of you that you may not have known existed. So in a way, I do appreciate Calder for who and what he is: a coping mechanism. I don't set out in The Legion to redeem him or even make any of the characters like him despite his negative characteristics. Initially, I did, especially when I was fighting with myself to keep him as Ren's love interest, but when it became obvious that he was toxic, I couldn't justify trying to paint him positively. It wasn't honest or real, as strange as that may sound since this is a piece of fantasy, but once I dropped the idea that maybe he was a good person that just needed the right person to come along, he made sense. I stopped hating him a little bit more. And then I left my husband.
I guess thanks to Calder are in order?
BACK TO CHALLENGE
* To be completely fair to Three, he was actually an excellent cook. Whether or not he got his skills in the way he said he did is questionable because LOL he was a fucking liar, but it cannot be debated that he made some amazing meals for me.
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