Are they grounded in reality or over the top? I'm reading David Copperfield rn, and it's interesting to me reading the way David practically worships the girls that he falls for throughout the story, seeing them as angels and goddesses. Even if you as the author have a pretty grounded perspective of them, how do the characters see each other?
While Alicia has a fairly grounded perspective of her sweetheart Kattar, she basically worships his mother, Mrs. Moon. In her eyes she is the pinnacle of feminine power. Beautiful, collected, smart, successful. An almost literal goddess in every way while still being feminine, and gentle. This is nothing short of awe inspiring for a woman who has very little of her own life in control, so Alicia has Mrs. Moon on a pedestal, so that even Kattar's not-so-good opinion of Mrs. Moon doesn't have a lot of sway in how she sees her.
Iām just worn out - tired of having to think - sick of āadulting.ā
The muddy blues bleed through and I wallow in them.
Nothing ever seems to go as planned, but then I still have to make new plans, only for those to be twisted - morphed into other plans - someone else's plansā¦
Itās not like that for Mrs. Moon.
Almost nothing seems to ever be out of her control, to catch her by surprise. When things do go wrong in her corner, itās always indirectly, somebody elseās faux-pas or trickle-up bad judgment that somehow manages to leak into her queendom - demi goddess-dom.
That said, she doesn't completely disregard Kattar's feelings. She just can't quite separate them from her own. She loves Kattar, finds him almost impossibly beautiful, but she also sees him as human, almost the same level as her, so it's easy for her to associate his discontent with the way he was raised with tumultuous moods, just like she herself feels. She does associate Kattar with a level of immaculate self-possession and order that is unattainable for herself at least, but she doesn't worship him the way she worships his mother, and she largely considers those traits in him the result of being born Mrs. Moon's child.
The bedroom door swings open at the gentlest prodding, unlike mine, which always sticks.
How he manages to weave perfection into even the littlest parts of his life is beyond me.
Must be his mother's blood.
My skin bristles at Kattarās ābetā forming a thousand tiny thorns under the thin petals of my rose-colored dress. His eyes arenāt angry, but theyāre dead serious, and I feel the need to fire back sharply - in defense of myself and Mrs. Moon.
āWho cares what your dad thinks? What does he have to do with this?ā
āNobody.ā Kattar shrugs, coolly, āAnd nothing. What does he have to do with anything?ā
The casual way he says it catches me off guard. I stare at him bewildered, unsure whether heās angry, or if he really doesnāt care. Heās never talked much about his dad in the pastā¦I guess because thereās nothing to say.
Kattar flips the sandwich over on his plate with two fingers, as if afraid to dirty his hands.
The silence thickens.
I canāt help but ask, with a shy half-laugh, āWhatās got you so meditative all of a sudden?ā
As for Kattar, he sees Alicia basically as she is, except that he maybe considers her a little more selfish than she really is, because he's used to getting his own way, and having to deal with being denied what he wants gives him an inaccurate impression of anything he doesn't like. Mostly he's able to resist that idea and operate like a mature adult, but occasionally he'll get a little moody about it.
Like Alicia, he also sees his mother as a goddess, but in a very different sense. More the sort of creator god that you spend your life afraid of the displeasure and trying to win the favor of, knowing you're at the mercy of their opinion of you. Interestingly, he has never been punished in his life, not once. But he grew up to be an organized, well behaved child, because his mother's disapproval and disappointment in him was so insufferable that he just did what she wanted. He knew if he did something she disagreed with there would be nothing he could do to regain standing in her eyes, so he just didn't.