Tagged by Writing this made me realize I really kind of phayl at getting strong, realistic characterizations until like the second or third incarnation of my people. >.>;;

Write out the names of your characters and explain
1) how you thought of their name
2) what made you create the character in the first place
3) how the character has changed over time (if they have changed)
4) any random fun fact about that character

Layne
1) Layne picked out her own name. I was trying to recoup the plot after losing sight on an Avatar: the Last Airbender fanfic due to shipping war pressures. XD So me and my beloved were talking one night about said fic and blasting out of nowhere I got the scene of a girl named Layne telling a boy with one blue eye and one brown eye that he was so full of shit one of his eyes turned brown. Dearest Laynie also insisted that it was “Layne” and not “Lane”. *is a dork*
2) Above fanfic. Layne is a takeoff of a Avatar fan character I had been developing named Xue.
3) Hoo boy. Layne has gone thru a lot. She started life as a Firebender, then turned into a openly bitchy, horribly self-centered loudmouthed and bratty Canadian college student. She’s calmed down quite a bit in the bitch department during the writing process and is more of a driven snarker.
4) Layne, as much as she wants to forget, was a cheerleader in junior high and high school.

Christopher
1) Christopher got this name because I had to make a snap decision to give him some kind of name while I was writing the snippets of scenes I was getting in my head at the early writing stages. As he’s sort of a pseudo-Christ figure, I just slapped down “Christopher” and went with it. After a while, it had just stuck around so long I never bothered to change it.
2) I wanted to have sort of an other-side-to-the-coin to Layne, who is a mouthy, opinionated atheist/agnostic. He’s a very faith-based devout Christian who honestly believes with everything he has that God is good. It makes for an interesting dynamic between them.
3) Christopher was originally conceived as a sort of false-prophet agnostic who had been saddled with the position of Christ figure. It seemed a little insulting to both my potential readership and the character after I attempted to write it, so he was revised to be more and more active in his faith and his beliefs rapidly grew to be truer and truer.
4) Christopher was born in Iowa and has three younger siblings: Phoebe, Daniela, and Jared.

Brother Bartholomew
1) I was trying to have good, older names for all of my Brothers, and so ergo Bartholomew. (The backstory in-canon is his mom likes old names, as shown by the fact that his three younger sisters are Corneilia, Penelope, and Charlotte.)
2) I needed an older mentor for Christopher who could be the go-between when Layne was being a brat and making Chirstopher cry who wouldn’t be Brother Superior. XD
3) Not much. He’s been Bart since day one. XD
4) He didn’t learn how to drive until he was 27; before that he rode a bike everywhere. (and he’s not very good at it XD)

Alistair
1) Another old name, and one I particularly love. <3 I wanted something a little more aristocratic, since the character I had in my mind was basically convinced he was just a little better than everyone else around him (except for Christopher, but he’s 5 years older, so he’s okay with it LOL).
2) I wanted to have someone who mirrored Layne’s self-confidence and bullishness in a way that would cause a background conflict within the monastery, because other wise it would have just been one guy and one girl in one location with one problem and I would have died of boredom trying to write it down. So, Alistair was a way to bring conflict in and show Layne some of the problems with herself all subtle-like.
3) He was a little flatter at first, not liking Layne because Christopher liked her better. After a while that got boring, and on a trans-Atlantic flight I worked out that Christopher was Alistair’s first friend in America and a source of comfort during a messy divorce, and Alistair is (in his own selfish bitchy way) worried just as worried about Christopher as most of the others. Yay character depth!
4) Alistair met Christopher when Christopher went running past, shedding clothing, and almost smacked Alistair in the head with one of his shoes.