Character Profile - Angel

One Chance: The Legend of Valerian's Garden is held together by its main character, Angela Davison Flair, professionally known as Angel. She and TJ brought everyone together, and she continues to be the spiritual center of the band.

Ironically, she started out as background noise.

In the fall of 2001, while in Year Seven of the Continuing story of Eli Flair and Ivy McGinnis, I decided that Eli needed a love interest. I had attempted this before, but it always ended under the Doomed to Fail premise, copied below from http://www.spideykicksbutt.com since Madgoblin posted a pretty good definition in his analysis of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson:

Basically, it means that every relationship that a hero gets involved in is doomed to fail. It has to be, because unless there is a walk down the aisle (or even sometimes when there is), there comes a point where either (1) the relationship just doesn’t work out or (2) the relationship is working out, but the hero can’t bring himself to admit to his girl about his double life, and so it ends.

Eli Flair was not a hero, but in the seven years that I had been writing him he had been pretty much on his own. He had no living relatives, his childhood sweetheart died when he was 22, and his day to day existence was relegated to the next town, the next show. I had written him as being on the road for excess of twenty five days a month. Every relationship with him was doomed to fail because he was so set in his ways and so used to being on his own.

Angel was a change of pace. She was someone that I intended to be able to match him as a road warrior and outcast, but she started off without much of a personality besides "SINGER" and "LOVE INTEREST" stamped on her forehead. Actually, if I remember correctly I wrote a mini - story about the week before Angel and Eli met each other, to try and get a bit of background on her before I put the two together. I believe I covered her and TJ discussing Mick's drinking problem, as well as Mick's ousting from the group and the riot that followed. At the same time, as this was October 2001, I had written a brief scene between Eli and Ivy where Eli was voluntarily leaving New York to try and get some physical and mental distance from the events of September 11th.

The two stories converged and I was off and running from there. Eventually I decided I liked the Mick character too much to leave him trapped in limbo, plus from a practical/personal standpoint I preferred Angel as a non - playing singer. This would free her hands and legs to go anywhere she wanted onstage and do whatever she wanted onstage without having to worry about the next chord sequence.

At the time I had Angel as a fairly mysterious character. She had no family to speak of in California, and the only clues to her thoughts were the conversations she had with TJ when nobody else was around. I decided she would be quieter and more thoughtful than Ivy, to draw a contrast between the two of them. I decided she would be goth because that's what I was interested in at the time. I couldn't think of a band name so I asked my friend Jenny what she thought a goth band could be called.

"Um, Valerian's Garden?"

And a legend was born.

Angel's personality didn't start to truly coalesce until I started picking out isolated scenes of the band on the road and just writing them in. I decided her favorite band was Tool, and had them constantly cover "Sober" in their live show. This would become important later.

While I enjoyed writing with Angel and the band alone, and I enjoyed writing Angel and Eli together, I realized I needed to do something big to really push their relationship, so I got her pregnant. In April 2002 I wrote a series about a night out. Simple and innocent, Eli and Angel, Ivy and her boyfriend Sean went out to a rave in San Jose, California. A month later, I put together a massive short story about how Angel discovered she was pregnant, and her reluctance to tell Eli.

A few people who have read my manuscript so far have asked me why she was so reluctant. Put simply, she thought he would leave her. They had been together for seven, eight months at that point but their respective jobs had kept them largely on the road away from each other for most of it. Angel was of the opinion that he didn't owe her anything, but she was also of the opinion that he had been a loner for so long, this would be a dealbreaker. Of course, it wasn't a dealbreaker, though it nearly broke him.

This piece eventually evolved into chapters 9 and 10 of my manuscript, but when originally written, was done so from Eli's perspective. He had suffered a head injury at his match the night he learned he was going to be a father, and while slipping in and out of consciousness, mentally waged war with his own insecurities. When he woke up, he knew he had to do the right thing.

Even though it was mainly written from Eli's point of view, the pieces remained constant. TJ called Ivy in a case of tough love, and the riot, reminiscent of the night they met, seemed to me to be the perfect backdrop to the night they realized they were in love.

Also of note is the fact that this is the first time I ever made reference to Angel's past:

He looks back at her curled up with the covers. She’s just like me, he said to himself. Torn- up on the inside. Overly- protective of her emotions. Hesitant to let anyone get inside her boundaries. Tonight, for the first time, she told him her life story and the real depths of the problems she had with her family. Finally, he understands why he hasn’t met them.

At the time I had no idea what the problems were, only that she had them and that's why she wasn't counting on Eli to stay with her.

I pointed it back to the fact that Tool was her favorite band. What about them would have attracted her attention so completely?

"It took so long to remember just what happened. I was so young and vestal then, you know it hurt me, but I'm breathing so I guess I'm still alive, even if signs seem to tell me otherwise" - Prison Sex

Why I zeroed in on the absolute worst thing that can happen to a young girl is beyond me, but the pieces all started to come together. She would've felt violated and abandoned by her family since they didn't believe her (in the original draft she didn't tell them), as well as the fact that they didn't particularly want her. It has been implied but never stated, that the reason she is an only child to two parents who were fairly advanced in age was because she was an accident that they never quite 'took' to. Out of nowhere she meets another outcast mutant in TJ, who quickly took a liking to her, and in equal parts happiness and desperation, she latched onto him right away.

Sometimes, all a person needs is a friendly face. TJ provided Angel with that, and with a completely non-judgemental point of view. They compliment each other very well, and, once I started on the manuscript proper and fleshed out his family, it was abundantly clear exactly how Angel survived high school.

Once the pregnancy question was settled, Angel got much more confident in my portrayals. Looking back on her character development both before and after she met Eli, I think it definitely threaded back to her parents. She transformed herself from Angela Davison to Angel (no last name needed) on moving from Nebraska to California, and even though she continued the trend of dysfunctional relationships up to the point where she and Eli met, she had quiet confidence. After Eli, she regressed a bit, but that was mainly due to the fact that this new guy and his intimidating best friend had suddenly shown up in her life; particularly due to the fact that they met under stressful circumstances, it's not surprising that she had her defenses up.

By this point, with Ivy managing the band to cross - country tours in the van, and Eli professing his love and the fact that he's not going anywhere without her, she was able to relax and gain back her confidence.

Coming into 2003, their daughter Mariella Jade was born, and I was probably hitting my peak as far as output is concerned. I put together a series that evolved into chapters 11 and 12 of the manuscript, wherein Angel and the boys returned to her hometown of Spencer, Nebraska, to play a show. The 'real' reason they went back was for Angel to see her parents again.

Why Spencer, Nebraska? I've never been there (though I would like to go just to see what's there), but it's the hometown for two of my main characters. I wanted her to be from the Midwest because Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin met in a small town and bonded over music - the core of the Garden had to be the friendship between Angel and TJ and the way they supported each other through everything. I chose Nebraska because it seemed like it was nearly in the exact center of the United States. I chose Spencer specifically, because when I was looking up "small towns" in Nebraska, it had a population of less than a thousand: the perfect place for an anonymous superstar to begin.

No offense intended to the denziens of Spencer, Nebraska. I love you and your town and would like to visit you someday.

After the show in Spencer, she was a made woman in my little pocket of the universe. This was about when I first thought about writing a full length novel with Angel as the main character. I had a number of failed openings over the course of about a year, mainly because I couldn't visualize the opening. All the while, I kept writing.

Additionally, I wrote out the lyrics for 12 songs at about this time that became their first album, Scarred. While I don't pretend that they're anything special, I think it gave them legitimacy as an actual band that could conceivably exist.

In the winter of 2004, after completing their second album, Stitches, the band went on an extended world tour that kept them effectively off my radar until November. During this time I realized what the novel needed to be about - the band's history and foundation. The show in Spencer, and the confrontation with Angel's parents was a perfect climax. It was at this point that I started to coalesce the long, somewhat convoluted history of Angel and shaped it into a cohesive story, though it would take another year for the starting/ending point to be realized, and another three for the story to truly be cohesive.

Spring 2005 I started working on the band's third album, which ultimately became Fire Water. The lyrics on this one were a marked change from the first two, and even though I didn't have any music to go with them, I could 'hear' certain rhythms in my head, and I thought 'Come on, baby,' one of the first songs I finished, could be a 'hit single:'

Come on baby stop and stare
Point and laugh cause I don't care
Run me down and run away
You didn't have the guts to stay

That convinced me of the background. Fire Water was a surprise mainstream hit along the lines of the Smash album by The Offspring, and Come On, Baby could be their first number one single. Based on the number of one - hit wonders that popular music has given us through the years, it's not farfetched that Valerian's Garden would have some kind of mainstream attention. However, because they had independant distribution and were always on the road, I played it off that the attention had been gradually building for months until someone noticed 'Hey, this song is really popular, and the album has gone platinum. Maybe we should find out something about them?'

I also drew from Korn for this aspect of the band's existence. Their first two albums were platinum sellers, but without any clear commerical singles, they built their audience on relentless touring, so when 'Got the Life' broke in 1998, they had a massive audience built in for mainstream America.

Through it all, Angel kept evolving. I had a rule in place for the characters I wrote about that has guided me pretty well. I never went into a new character with too much of their past set in stone. When the situation arose that called for a decision, I went with what made the most sense at the time, and once decided, never changed the essence of the detail (Some things needed to change to fit the circumstances - TJ's brother Rob was a product of my second draft, and the Johnson parents, a product of my third, as well as Angel's relationship with them).

Angel's lyrics are very personal and very direct. She has used her music as an outlet for her memories. Ostensibly, the band had songs before their Spencer gig in 2003, but because that was where I first started writing them on a large scale, the 'real story' is that since she discovered her pregnancy, Angel abstained from all drugs and alcohol, and the newfound clear - headedness focused her thoughts. She did not feel sorry for herself for her past; she was angry at what she allowed to happen and what her family allowed to happen to her. Since she wrote Scarred and Stitches, she has toured the country multiple times and has circled the world, and much of her anger has dissipated, which has shown on the more imagery - focused lyrics on Fire Water.

She has little patience for ignorance and intolerance, and judges people on their actions. Her work ethic is heroic; she is always pushing for a longer tour and unannounced 'one - off' shows to work on new material in front of a live audience. Her insistence on constant touring and recording is partly due to the fact that she is having the time of her life, and partly due to the fact that her daughter is getting older and is about to start school (as of January 2009 Mariella Jade will be six years old), and they will no longer be able to pick up and go whenever they want.

Angel is equal parts fiercely private and fiercely loyal. She is difficult to get close to; as much as she has insisted she is over her past she still has a lot of trouble trusting people, however, once you're in with Angel you're in for life. She remembers the names and faces of an overwhelming number of her fans, she has fought for the road crew that traveled with the band for their first two major tours to stick with them for the third (and gave them significant raises in the process), and treats the bands who open for them as peers and equals.

This is in sharp contrast to her own experience. Lennon Murphy once said that she was told by Arista marketing people that it was not "cost effective" (paraphrasing) to push female artists, so she was essentially on her own. Angel and her boys have dealt with plenty of harassment over the course of their career, usually by hard partying bands who take a dim view of both the serious nature of Valerian's Garden and the way they routinely blow the other bands on the bill out of the water, and by the fans of those bands and their catcalls. Valerian's Garden has not signed with a major label because they are not able to gain sufficient assurances that their artistic integrity would not be compromised; instead, they have released their albums on a large independant, CSE Records, due to the relationship that both Eli and Ivy have with the owner. Angel's opinion is that she would rather release a record that has very little marketing buzz and get the word out herself with a long, drawn out tour.

Thematically, Angel's heroes have been Maynard James Keenan, Jim Morrison, Bill Hicks, Louie Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and the other early Jazz musicians. She was deeply inspired by their improvisational skills, and encourages the band (and herself) to improvise when they think they can make it fit the current song. Due to TJ's encouragement she has honed her own improvisational lyrical skills to the point where she can keep going with a rhythm and a beat almost indefinitely, and she has in turn encouraged the rest of the band to do the same. This has the added affect of making each show unique for their fans.

She has been studying and practicing shamanism for several years now, though she has not incorporated much of this into her work as she does not feel she knows enough about it to do justice.

As part of her relationship with her fans, Angel wears a bondage bracelet on her left wrist that covers an Omega-shaped scar. The bracelet has four separate metal rings on it that she attaches various charms to every night. Fans have begun to bring charms to shows in hopes that she will trade off with them - and she does so fairly often. She refers to the fans as "Darklings and User Poets," as a term of endearment.

Angel is my favorite creation to date. I think it's because she came to be during the period (2002 and onward) where I'm happy with the things I've written. Reading back on what I've written in the past, the quality is hit and miss before 2002. Since then, everything has had much more cohesion and unity, and I think it shows in the character.