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One of the things I do with my characters from time to time is work out where they fall in the Chinese zodiac. I've got very little interest in Western astrology, but the Chinese system is really kind of fascinating for some reason. I don't feel particularly inclined to say it's accurate about the real world- I've never bothered to study people closely enough to see how well or poorly they match- but when it comes to generating characters, or trying to fill in a bit of a character's personality, I often find that the Chinese animal sign and element cycles provide a lot of fascinating ground to work from. Usually I confine this to Asian characters, but every so often I go to see how it applies to one of the Western ones.
(For reference's sake, before I go any further, I was born in the Year of the Wood Tiger. The animal cycle is twelve years long. The elemental cycle is five elements- earth, water, fire, metal, wood- and runs in yin-yang pairs of years so that certain animals are always yin and others are always yang.)
Last night, purely out of curiosity, I went to my favourite Chinese horoscope site- Twilight Zone's Chinese Horoscope- and looked up![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twoeyesonthesky's sign. Reign of Fire starts in the year 2000, as far as I can tell. Quinn is twelve years old at the time, which gives him a birth year of 1988. I had given him a birthdate of 27 February when I created his journal- most of the time I pick dates more or less at random for my characters, rather than using the same day and month as the actors involved. I put this into the 'find your birth sign' feature on the TZ site.
In 1988 Chinese New Year fell on the 17th of February. As a consequence, Quinn was born in the Year of the Earth Dragon. And because of the twelve year animal cycle, the dragon under London awakened and escaped into the world in the Year of the Metal Dragon.
Throw in the bit where he got unignited flame-stuff directly in his eyes as the dragon was starting to stir, and GOD DAMMIT, this movie could have had enough mythological significance to choke Joseph Campbell…
(For reference's sake, before I go any further, I was born in the Year of the Wood Tiger. The animal cycle is twelve years long. The elemental cycle is five elements- earth, water, fire, metal, wood- and runs in yin-yang pairs of years so that certain animals are always yin and others are always yang.)
Last night, purely out of curiosity, I went to my favourite Chinese horoscope site- Twilight Zone's Chinese Horoscope- and looked up
twoeyesonthesky's sign. Reign of Fire starts in the year 2000, as far as I can tell. Quinn is twelve years old at the time, which gives him a birth year of 1988. I had given him a birthdate of 27 February when I created his journal- most of the time I pick dates more or less at random for my characters, rather than using the same day and month as the actors involved. I put this into the 'find your birth sign' feature on the TZ site.In 1988 Chinese New Year fell on the 17th of February. As a consequence, Quinn was born in the Year of the Earth Dragon. And because of the twelve year animal cycle, the dragon under London awakened and escaped into the world in the Year of the Metal Dragon.
Throw in the bit where he got unignited flame-stuff directly in his eyes as the dragon was starting to stir, and GOD DAMMIT, this movie could have had enough mythological significance to choke Joseph Campbell…
