Rystil Arden
First Post
Mine is really long (so I SBLOCKed it), but it's the same character as Morrus, so you can see how the character differs. I don't know how, but somehow I must have caught onto a vibe about this whole Oliver soul-thing, so a lot of the character is influenced by that, and the rest is his weird and somewhat psychotic duality with women. Interestingly, since Rodrigo played my character's sister, both of us thought we were the older sibling and that the other needed protection, and Frannie thought basically the opposite of what actually goes on with Daniel and the ladies. It's interesting, and of course to all the viewers at home, we couldn't see each other's answers. I was happy in the game that we wound up with Humie and Corky actually getting to be chums, though.
[SBLOCK=Daniel Hume]1. What's your most vivid memory of your grandfather Oliver?
Though I've seen him more recently, the real flashbulb memory of Grandpa Ollie was back when I was a young lad. He was showing me his estate and his vast riches, and he said to me "Danny, my boy, do you want to know the secret to happiness? You can never trust a woman, lad. Use them for your own pleasures and then cast them aside. Let them into your bed but never into your heart. For if you become soft, they will surely destroy you, body and soul, and take away everything you hold dear. You have inherited my name, and through your father, you are the heir to my wealth, and since he has failed me, I doubt he is long for this world...you must be heir to my spirit as well." He was an odd old codger, but he sometimes had good advice. And he was right about the death of my dear unfortunate beshrewed father. And now Grandpa Ollie is gone too, but his fortune shall pass to me, and Corky and I are going to have a night on the town that the swooning ladies will not soon forget. That way he will be able to live on in this world, even as his soul rests in Hell's cold embrace.
2. Of the many young women you've dallied with, who was your
favorite and why?
With whom I've dallied, you mean? Oh dear, hard to say, hard to say. This will be tough. Might as well ask me my favourite meal I've ever eaten, you know? Ah, well, there was Mrs. Jessica Talverton. A somewhat pretty young lady married to the late Mr. Geoffrey Talverton. Honestly, I didn't expect him to shoot himself after I convinced her to steal his life savings for me. I wouldn't wish death to anyone, and besides, this was back before I had a good job and source of income. Dear Jessica is still in jail for that, you know? She wouldn't say a word about where the money went. So very loyal. I told her I would wait for her, and she believed me. Isn't she precious? But you're right, I might have chosen her for the money and not the girl, which isn't exactly the thrust of the question. I shall have to change my answer to Ms. Selena Ingham, the lovely secretary. Much prettier than Jessica--in fact, one of the most beautiful women with whom I've dallied. She was just the sweetest thing. Very eager to please me and fulfill my every desire. Like a puppy almost, you know? If I'm ever around London again, I might actually look her up, and that's high billing from me.
3. Gerald "Corky" Corkington follows you about constantly,
proclaiming himself to be your best friend. How loyal are you to him?
Corky is a right fine chap, and a good companion for my many escapades. Sometimes I do get the feeling that he may not be as loyal as he seems, but perhaps I am just being paranoid. After all, he isn't a woman, so he does have the dignity and honour of a man. Did you know that Plato said that man is a higher level of reincarnation, followed by woman and then beast as the increasingly degraded and corrupt forms of the soul? Ah, but I ramble. Corky, right? My loyalty to him is greater than to almost any other person in this world, which is to say, as long as he is loyal to me, I will show him my full respect and loyalty. He shall expect to receive full benefits of my inevitable new fortune with poor Grandpa Ollie off to Hell, and he will always have my full protection, but the moment he betrays me, I shall return it in kind, in an open fashion befitting a gentleman. He deserves no less.
4. What did happen to that 4th grader who died when you were at school?
Oh that. Look, that one wasn't actually my fault at all, honestly! She was just a bit loony. We were on a field trip to Dover, and there was a beautiful sunset and she wanted to kiss me. Now look, I may have already had that je ne sais crois that attracts every pretty girl in the Empire, but I was still a normal 9-year-old boy. So I told her she was gross and to go away. Okay, okay, specifically I said "Yuck! You're disgusting. Go jump off a cliff." But that's just children's talk. It's not my fault the fool girl actually jumped off those white cliffs where Arnold's ignorant armies clashed by night. Certainly no one considered it to be anything but a suicide or an accident. I still feel bad about it now though. Killing a woman is like kicking a defenseless puppy. I wouldn't do that. And you know what--ironically, she was actually rather pretty. Ah, what a waste.
5. Does it bother you that you and your sister are the last
living blood members of the Hume family line?
Not really. In fact, in most ways, it's better that way. The more random relatives, the more infighting and vitriol over the will. I think the funeral should a be a solemn time when we show our respect to the departed and then all the money goes to me, the sole heir, no quarrel or dispute required. Though technically, I wonder if any of the girls I've tossed aside have sired an illegitimate new generation of Humes? I suppose I shall be forced to take a wife at some point if I want our name to continue. I should do so as tribute to our noble ancestor David Hume, the great philosopher, economist, and historian, but my mind recoils at the thought. Hmm, I do think I shall have to choose the meekest most submissive girl I can find as a wife, the complete opposite of our choleric Mum, though I do hear that a girl changes greatly for the worse when she becomes a wife, almost into a monster like that Stevenson story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Grandpa Ollie told me that. I believe it--surely our father would never have married that witch of a woman if she was always like she was at the end...
6. Why are you often late to your job?
What, are you kidding? Why don't you try coming into work on time after a night full of wine, women, and song? Besides, I wouldn't be any good to our firm with a splitting headache. Fortunately, I have an agreement worked out with our nice secretary--Christina is her name, lovely girl--so that she marks me as having always been on time and makes excuses like 'He's in the loo--come back in a bit' whenever someone is looking for me. Not that I would be in any danger of losing my job. I'm just too useful a barrister, thanks to my natural ability during cross examination to make female witnesses say what I want them to say. But still, it never hurts to have an immaculate record, you know? Of course, I'll admit I might go into work, even with the hangover, if it didn't bore me so much. I guess it's the dilettante in me, but I just have too many side interests to truly concentrate on one thing, and no 'side interests' is not a euphemism for girls I'm seeing, though I do have many of those as well. From writing poetry and prose to artwork and music, I guess I'm just a Renaissance man. I'm not great at some of those things, but they still interest me. Perhaps such broadening of the mind is the curse of the highly educated. In that case, I bear my curse proudly.
7. How do you earn your spending money?
Didn't I mention wine, women, and song? The good news is that I don't actually lose much money on the women, which I hear is unusual. Grandpa Ollie would be proud. Still, wining and dining is expensive, and I like to be a good friend to Corky and help him out as well. Unfortunately, he is not as smooth with the ladies and is constantly in trouble and needing money for expensive gifts, and flowers, and...ah Corky, you're my closest friend, but when will you learn? Back when I was at school, education was a big deal too. You'd be surprised how fast Geoffrey Talverton's money disappeared. Franny and I were fortunate that Mum died when she did, releasing at least the small amount of Father's money that she hadn't squandered in her own bloated selfish womanly greed before she finally collapsed in on her own hatred.
8. How important is it to you to inherit your grandfather's fortune?
It is of paramount importance, by my honour as a Hume and out of respect for my grandfather and his wishes. Which is funny, since I don't really need the money per se to live comfortably. But consider--I promised Grandpa Ollie to follow in his footsteps and become his heir. If I don't get the money, who does? If that old Finchley witch grabs the money somehow, Grandpa Ollie's spirit would be tormented indeed down in Hell to see a grabby old hag hold it in her clutches. And that's really the only other possibility that I see. I mean, he's not going to give it to Franny--she's a girl. Unless there's some kind of scheme where the will is switched for a fake and some outsider tries to take the money. Again, I owe it to my grandfather to prevent that. Now, I suppose it's possible that he had some sort of sudden epiphany and donated much of the fortune to charity. If that is the case, it is the only option which I can abide that does not involve my inheritance of the fortune proper. After all, it is a good thing for those who are superior to provide aid to their lessers, don't you think?
9. You were of age during the Great War. Why didn't you enlist?
So are you talking pre-1916 or after January 27 of that year when voluntary enlisted was stopped and all British males who couldn't dodge it were conscripted? Because you're right on both counts. The first part was simple--war, blood, death, and gritty dirt are simply not my style, particularly the same thing, day in and day out. I'm a lover, not a fighter. I mean, I suppose it worked for Wilfred Owen, Joyce Kilmer, Siegfried Sassoon and the war poets, but Owen was caught in machine gun crossfire and killed seven days before the Armistice, Kilmer died on a scouting mission, and only Sassoon of those three is actually still alive. The university was much more the right place for me than the battlefield, and I certainly didn't want to join my grandfather, father, and mother in death so soon.
So now let's talk about the National Military Service Act and involuntary conscription. Well, you know they only managed to ensnare about 43,000 men with that. Odd, huh? 93,000 simply vanished and failed to appear. About 750,000 managed to find some sort of exemption. I had it even easier. You see, some occupations were deemed to be vital to the Empire's economy during the war. They were called starred occupations because a black star was inked in next to a person's name if they were a member of such a profession, and then those names were never considered for conscription. Well, Selena Ingham--you remember Selena, don't you? Just the sweetest girl, she was. Well, I met her in London after Oxford. Due to the war efforts, she was working for the military records, and she didn't want them to take away her Danny--that would have made her very sad indeed. So she marked my name with a star, and I was exempt. I told you she was the best--like one of those trained monkeys that can do marvelous tricks! And that's what gave me the idea to do the same at work with my tardiness. Truly the one who controls the past is the one who controls the records. In that sense, we give these women too much power.
10. How did your parents die?
Oh, Mum and Dad? Well, what can I say. It may be rude to speak of one's mother this way, but Mum was quite the termagant, an abusive harridan of a woman. And poor father was totally cowed by her, at least until he died when I was still a lad, shortly after Grandpa Ollie predicted it, actually. That was quite eerie. Without our father as a target, Mum started to channel her abuse at Franny and me, but when I became old enough to stand up to her and block a blow intended for my sister, well, something happened inside of her. With no good targets left for her abuse, I think she began eating herself away on the inside with her own built-up choler--that's yellow bile, one of the ancient four humours, you know?--until she just wasted away.
11. Why do you think you will never marry?
I suppose I sort of answered this one already. I shall be concise this time. What--Daniel, concise! I know, you laugh, but I'll be brief. Basically, I don't want any of my lovely flings to undergo a metamorphosis into a hateful creature like my mother, and marriage is want to cause such a change. Furthermore, I'm going to continue my dallying with woman after woman, marriage or no marriage, so it shall be hard to find a woman meek enough for that to work without some sort of annoying protest. Still, though an heir to the Hume name would be nice, I guess the problem is that I am looking more for a girl-pet that can bear an heir than a wife. Were I born perhaps a few centuries earlier, that sort of arrangement would have been easier. But you shall not see me mope about it like Robinson's child of scorn, Miniver Cheevy.
12. Would you give your own life for your sister's?
If you asked me this question when I was younger, I might have said yes. I've always tried to protect my little sister. She even seemed like a regular person rather than a female when she was younger. But once she grew from a girl into a young woman, she began to transform into some kind of two-bit whore. I can't blame her entirely--she was abused as a child after all, so she probably has self-esteem issues, but I can never respect her the same way again. She has become something less than she once was, and so her life is no longer of enough value that I could honourably make the trade of mine for hers. You can bet that I'll protect her if it doesn't cost me my life, though. There is an off-chance that she will recover some sliver of her Hume honour, and she is my little sister. If she degrades much farther though, I don't even know what I should think!
13. What hobby are you proudest of?
Hmmm...hmmm...well, I assume womanising doesn't count as a hobby? I do so very many different things, many not well, I admit. It's a toss-up between fencing and poetry. I've been told that I have a natural talent for fencing, and I'm very good at it--while I was at Oxford, I placed at a national tournament. But I'm a lover, not a fighter. I guess I'm better at fencing than poetry, but I'm just not as proud of it. So then I'll pick poetry. A love poem composed just right can simply melt a woman, and they're usually easy to re-use. Want an example? Of course you don't! But you shall have one anyway.
Fair tresses spill and limn your lovely face,
Soft silken waves exquisite chestnut hue.
Two eyes, celestial orbs at once embrace
The pathway to my will and now renew
A foolish fancy, young lad's dreams of love,
With hazel gleam, mood-shifting, clear and kind,
O'er Ruby lips that hold the whispers of
A scholar's soul, a keen and beaut'eous mind.
Intelligence inspiring and rare,
That spirals, twists, begins to intertwine,
A mind set on an everbranching stair,
That reaches out with warm caress to mine.
O siren, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine,
Within your eyes, your psyche is my shrine.
If she's blonde, chestnut can become flaxen, or I can use auburn, or something else. There's plenty of other two-syllable colour descriptors. Hazel can be replaced with azure, emerald, or anything else in the same way. If her name or nickname has two syllables, you replace the generic 'siren' with her name, as it was in the original verse to which I allude in my own poem. The rest can usually stay the same--even the dullest girls like to think that you find them smart, you know? [/SBLOCK]
[SBLOCK=Daniel Hume]1. What's your most vivid memory of your grandfather Oliver?
Though I've seen him more recently, the real flashbulb memory of Grandpa Ollie was back when I was a young lad. He was showing me his estate and his vast riches, and he said to me "Danny, my boy, do you want to know the secret to happiness? You can never trust a woman, lad. Use them for your own pleasures and then cast them aside. Let them into your bed but never into your heart. For if you become soft, they will surely destroy you, body and soul, and take away everything you hold dear. You have inherited my name, and through your father, you are the heir to my wealth, and since he has failed me, I doubt he is long for this world...you must be heir to my spirit as well." He was an odd old codger, but he sometimes had good advice. And he was right about the death of my dear unfortunate beshrewed father. And now Grandpa Ollie is gone too, but his fortune shall pass to me, and Corky and I are going to have a night on the town that the swooning ladies will not soon forget. That way he will be able to live on in this world, even as his soul rests in Hell's cold embrace.
2. Of the many young women you've dallied with, who was your
favorite and why?
With whom I've dallied, you mean? Oh dear, hard to say, hard to say. This will be tough. Might as well ask me my favourite meal I've ever eaten, you know? Ah, well, there was Mrs. Jessica Talverton. A somewhat pretty young lady married to the late Mr. Geoffrey Talverton. Honestly, I didn't expect him to shoot himself after I convinced her to steal his life savings for me. I wouldn't wish death to anyone, and besides, this was back before I had a good job and source of income. Dear Jessica is still in jail for that, you know? She wouldn't say a word about where the money went. So very loyal. I told her I would wait for her, and she believed me. Isn't she precious? But you're right, I might have chosen her for the money and not the girl, which isn't exactly the thrust of the question. I shall have to change my answer to Ms. Selena Ingham, the lovely secretary. Much prettier than Jessica--in fact, one of the most beautiful women with whom I've dallied. She was just the sweetest thing. Very eager to please me and fulfill my every desire. Like a puppy almost, you know? If I'm ever around London again, I might actually look her up, and that's high billing from me.
3. Gerald "Corky" Corkington follows you about constantly,
proclaiming himself to be your best friend. How loyal are you to him?
Corky is a right fine chap, and a good companion for my many escapades. Sometimes I do get the feeling that he may not be as loyal as he seems, but perhaps I am just being paranoid. After all, he isn't a woman, so he does have the dignity and honour of a man. Did you know that Plato said that man is a higher level of reincarnation, followed by woman and then beast as the increasingly degraded and corrupt forms of the soul? Ah, but I ramble. Corky, right? My loyalty to him is greater than to almost any other person in this world, which is to say, as long as he is loyal to me, I will show him my full respect and loyalty. He shall expect to receive full benefits of my inevitable new fortune with poor Grandpa Ollie off to Hell, and he will always have my full protection, but the moment he betrays me, I shall return it in kind, in an open fashion befitting a gentleman. He deserves no less.
4. What did happen to that 4th grader who died when you were at school?
Oh that. Look, that one wasn't actually my fault at all, honestly! She was just a bit loony. We were on a field trip to Dover, and there was a beautiful sunset and she wanted to kiss me. Now look, I may have already had that je ne sais crois that attracts every pretty girl in the Empire, but I was still a normal 9-year-old boy. So I told her she was gross and to go away. Okay, okay, specifically I said "Yuck! You're disgusting. Go jump off a cliff." But that's just children's talk. It's not my fault the fool girl actually jumped off those white cliffs where Arnold's ignorant armies clashed by night. Certainly no one considered it to be anything but a suicide or an accident. I still feel bad about it now though. Killing a woman is like kicking a defenseless puppy. I wouldn't do that. And you know what--ironically, she was actually rather pretty. Ah, what a waste.
5. Does it bother you that you and your sister are the last
living blood members of the Hume family line?
Not really. In fact, in most ways, it's better that way. The more random relatives, the more infighting and vitriol over the will. I think the funeral should a be a solemn time when we show our respect to the departed and then all the money goes to me, the sole heir, no quarrel or dispute required. Though technically, I wonder if any of the girls I've tossed aside have sired an illegitimate new generation of Humes? I suppose I shall be forced to take a wife at some point if I want our name to continue. I should do so as tribute to our noble ancestor David Hume, the great philosopher, economist, and historian, but my mind recoils at the thought. Hmm, I do think I shall have to choose the meekest most submissive girl I can find as a wife, the complete opposite of our choleric Mum, though I do hear that a girl changes greatly for the worse when she becomes a wife, almost into a monster like that Stevenson story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Grandpa Ollie told me that. I believe it--surely our father would never have married that witch of a woman if she was always like she was at the end...
6. Why are you often late to your job?
What, are you kidding? Why don't you try coming into work on time after a night full of wine, women, and song? Besides, I wouldn't be any good to our firm with a splitting headache. Fortunately, I have an agreement worked out with our nice secretary--Christina is her name, lovely girl--so that she marks me as having always been on time and makes excuses like 'He's in the loo--come back in a bit' whenever someone is looking for me. Not that I would be in any danger of losing my job. I'm just too useful a barrister, thanks to my natural ability during cross examination to make female witnesses say what I want them to say. But still, it never hurts to have an immaculate record, you know? Of course, I'll admit I might go into work, even with the hangover, if it didn't bore me so much. I guess it's the dilettante in me, but I just have too many side interests to truly concentrate on one thing, and no 'side interests' is not a euphemism for girls I'm seeing, though I do have many of those as well. From writing poetry and prose to artwork and music, I guess I'm just a Renaissance man. I'm not great at some of those things, but they still interest me. Perhaps such broadening of the mind is the curse of the highly educated. In that case, I bear my curse proudly.
7. How do you earn your spending money?
Didn't I mention wine, women, and song? The good news is that I don't actually lose much money on the women, which I hear is unusual. Grandpa Ollie would be proud. Still, wining and dining is expensive, and I like to be a good friend to Corky and help him out as well. Unfortunately, he is not as smooth with the ladies and is constantly in trouble and needing money for expensive gifts, and flowers, and...ah Corky, you're my closest friend, but when will you learn? Back when I was at school, education was a big deal too. You'd be surprised how fast Geoffrey Talverton's money disappeared. Franny and I were fortunate that Mum died when she did, releasing at least the small amount of Father's money that she hadn't squandered in her own bloated selfish womanly greed before she finally collapsed in on her own hatred.
8. How important is it to you to inherit your grandfather's fortune?
It is of paramount importance, by my honour as a Hume and out of respect for my grandfather and his wishes. Which is funny, since I don't really need the money per se to live comfortably. But consider--I promised Grandpa Ollie to follow in his footsteps and become his heir. If I don't get the money, who does? If that old Finchley witch grabs the money somehow, Grandpa Ollie's spirit would be tormented indeed down in Hell to see a grabby old hag hold it in her clutches. And that's really the only other possibility that I see. I mean, he's not going to give it to Franny--she's a girl. Unless there's some kind of scheme where the will is switched for a fake and some outsider tries to take the money. Again, I owe it to my grandfather to prevent that. Now, I suppose it's possible that he had some sort of sudden epiphany and donated much of the fortune to charity. If that is the case, it is the only option which I can abide that does not involve my inheritance of the fortune proper. After all, it is a good thing for those who are superior to provide aid to their lessers, don't you think?
9. You were of age during the Great War. Why didn't you enlist?
So are you talking pre-1916 or after January 27 of that year when voluntary enlisted was stopped and all British males who couldn't dodge it were conscripted? Because you're right on both counts. The first part was simple--war, blood, death, and gritty dirt are simply not my style, particularly the same thing, day in and day out. I'm a lover, not a fighter. I mean, I suppose it worked for Wilfred Owen, Joyce Kilmer, Siegfried Sassoon and the war poets, but Owen was caught in machine gun crossfire and killed seven days before the Armistice, Kilmer died on a scouting mission, and only Sassoon of those three is actually still alive. The university was much more the right place for me than the battlefield, and I certainly didn't want to join my grandfather, father, and mother in death so soon.
So now let's talk about the National Military Service Act and involuntary conscription. Well, you know they only managed to ensnare about 43,000 men with that. Odd, huh? 93,000 simply vanished and failed to appear. About 750,000 managed to find some sort of exemption. I had it even easier. You see, some occupations were deemed to be vital to the Empire's economy during the war. They were called starred occupations because a black star was inked in next to a person's name if they were a member of such a profession, and then those names were never considered for conscription. Well, Selena Ingham--you remember Selena, don't you? Just the sweetest girl, she was. Well, I met her in London after Oxford. Due to the war efforts, she was working for the military records, and she didn't want them to take away her Danny--that would have made her very sad indeed. So she marked my name with a star, and I was exempt. I told you she was the best--like one of those trained monkeys that can do marvelous tricks! And that's what gave me the idea to do the same at work with my tardiness. Truly the one who controls the past is the one who controls the records. In that sense, we give these women too much power.
10. How did your parents die?
Oh, Mum and Dad? Well, what can I say. It may be rude to speak of one's mother this way, but Mum was quite the termagant, an abusive harridan of a woman. And poor father was totally cowed by her, at least until he died when I was still a lad, shortly after Grandpa Ollie predicted it, actually. That was quite eerie. Without our father as a target, Mum started to channel her abuse at Franny and me, but when I became old enough to stand up to her and block a blow intended for my sister, well, something happened inside of her. With no good targets left for her abuse, I think she began eating herself away on the inside with her own built-up choler--that's yellow bile, one of the ancient four humours, you know?--until she just wasted away.
11. Why do you think you will never marry?
I suppose I sort of answered this one already. I shall be concise this time. What--Daniel, concise! I know, you laugh, but I'll be brief. Basically, I don't want any of my lovely flings to undergo a metamorphosis into a hateful creature like my mother, and marriage is want to cause such a change. Furthermore, I'm going to continue my dallying with woman after woman, marriage or no marriage, so it shall be hard to find a woman meek enough for that to work without some sort of annoying protest. Still, though an heir to the Hume name would be nice, I guess the problem is that I am looking more for a girl-pet that can bear an heir than a wife. Were I born perhaps a few centuries earlier, that sort of arrangement would have been easier. But you shall not see me mope about it like Robinson's child of scorn, Miniver Cheevy.
12. Would you give your own life for your sister's?
If you asked me this question when I was younger, I might have said yes. I've always tried to protect my little sister. She even seemed like a regular person rather than a female when she was younger. But once she grew from a girl into a young woman, she began to transform into some kind of two-bit whore. I can't blame her entirely--she was abused as a child after all, so she probably has self-esteem issues, but I can never respect her the same way again. She has become something less than she once was, and so her life is no longer of enough value that I could honourably make the trade of mine for hers. You can bet that I'll protect her if it doesn't cost me my life, though. There is an off-chance that she will recover some sliver of her Hume honour, and she is my little sister. If she degrades much farther though, I don't even know what I should think!
13. What hobby are you proudest of?
Hmmm...hmmm...well, I assume womanising doesn't count as a hobby? I do so very many different things, many not well, I admit. It's a toss-up between fencing and poetry. I've been told that I have a natural talent for fencing, and I'm very good at it--while I was at Oxford, I placed at a national tournament. But I'm a lover, not a fighter. I guess I'm better at fencing than poetry, but I'm just not as proud of it. So then I'll pick poetry. A love poem composed just right can simply melt a woman, and they're usually easy to re-use. Want an example? Of course you don't! But you shall have one anyway.
Fair tresses spill and limn your lovely face,
Soft silken waves exquisite chestnut hue.
Two eyes, celestial orbs at once embrace
The pathway to my will and now renew
A foolish fancy, young lad's dreams of love,
With hazel gleam, mood-shifting, clear and kind,
O'er Ruby lips that hold the whispers of
A scholar's soul, a keen and beaut'eous mind.
Intelligence inspiring and rare,
That spirals, twists, begins to intertwine,
A mind set on an everbranching stair,
That reaches out with warm caress to mine.
O siren, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine,
Within your eyes, your psyche is my shrine.
If she's blonde, chestnut can become flaxen, or I can use auburn, or something else. There's plenty of other two-syllable colour descriptors. Hazel can be replaced with azure, emerald, or anything else in the same way. If her name or nickname has two syllables, you replace the generic 'siren' with her name, as it was in the original verse to which I allude in my own poem. The rest can usually stay the same--even the dullest girls like to think that you find them smart, you know? [/SBLOCK]