Inside the Rewrite

Character Spotlight #2 – Uzley February 9, 2010

My goodness, I hear you cry, she actually posted on time! Well, dear readers, I promised you a weekly spotlight for i Love to Read Month, and a weekly spotlight you shall have! All… three of you. Yeah. BUT MOVING ON.

This week’s spotlight is on Kevin Uzley, the main character of my 2008 NaNoNovel, Unit 39. Unit 39 is my one attempt at a science-fiction-y story (read: fantasy IN SPACE!), and it is actually a pretty interesting story. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far in it, and am still trying to finish Chapter Three. Considering the fact that these 2.5 chapters span nearly 27 pages in Word (Times New Roman, 12pt font, single-spaced), I think that’s a pretty good achievement, for me. Uzley is one of my favorite MCs, and (unfortunately) he knows it. And so uses his preferential status to try and convince me not to let bad things happen to him in the story. Since I am contrary, however, this often leads to hilarity (ex. Uzley getting the crap beaten out of him by a training bot. That twelve-year-olds regularly beat).

Quick character description!
Uzley is a User – okay, this will take a bit of explaining. In the Unit 39-verse, about 1 percent of children born have the ability to control some aspect of an “elemental” force (Wind, Water, Earth, Fire, Light, Darkness) with a varying amount of power. Uzley is a Light User – specifically, he is able to create illusions with his miiiiiiind He is in theory only limited by his imagination and his own concentration, but this doesn’t always work out in reality. For example, it’s easier for him to make fifty small balls of light float in one place than to make them go off in random directions. It’s even harder for him to create something more complex, like a copy of himself, and make it move convincingly enough to fool a potential enemy. He’s had years of self-training and the limits of his power are making three copies of himself moving in different directions from him, making himself (or one other person) invisible for about five minutes, or making four people invisible for about thirty seconds.
Uzley is not particularly tall (5″9, a bit shorter than the male average of 5″11 on the ship), with straight black hair (worn slgihtly longer than the usual military buzz cut) and dark brown eyes (almost black). He has an athletic build and is fairly slim. A distinguishing characteristic is his skin colour, a rich medium-brown (after 2000 years in space with a Caucasian-dominated genepool, most people are pretty white), a product of his predominantly-Indian heritage.
Kevin is the group’s jokester, and he does his best to make light of almost any situation. He loves to tease his teammates, and more often than not ends up annoying them (*coughKaracough*) to the point of potential violence. He does, however, have a strong attachment to his Unit, and views them as his surrogate family. Uzley has some abandonment issues (this makes more sense when you read on), and generally likes to be around people whenever possible. He also hates conflict, and tries to defuse any potentially serious situation with a joke. He does the same in  order to avoid facing up to his own issues. He has a hidden store of resentment towards the government of the ship in general for making him a soldier and taking him away from his family without giving him a choice first. He also loves to watch movies – his dream is to one day be a film director.
Users in the Unit 39-verse are basically drafted into the army the second their powers first show (usually between the ages of 3 and 7), and trained in their powers until they are 12, at which point they are put into a Unit with other Users of similar age. A Unit is usually made up of two offensive Users, a Healer, and a Darkness or a Light User. Uzley goes by his last name because it’s army protocol.

And that marks the end of our second character spotlight! Hope you guys learned a bit more about Uzley, and found him a little less scary than Derek! Next week’s post might be a little late because of choir tour, but I’ll see you at some point! This is Daryth, signing off.