alenxa_classic | sounds like orange

When I was about half my current age, Crayola came out with a set of Silver Swirls crayons. They were just about exactly what the name suggests--crayons with both silver and color tightly swirled together. They colored evenly, with color laydown so rich I worried about using them for fear they'd wear to nubs before their time. What the result looked most like, I realize now, was metallic car paint colors. It was a gorgeous effect and I have yet to find them being sold anywhere mainstream again. (They're going for $7 a mint-condition box on eBay. Makes me wish I could find stuff at my parents' house.)

The other thing that was cool about these crayons was the color names. It was like the company had finally let its creative department have some fun instead of chaining them to a thesaurus (cerulean??). The green one was something like "frosted pine," the yellow I think was "Aztec gold," and the black/gray one was "graphite," which it really did look like. My favorite name was the light brown one called "cinnamon satin." It looked infinitely better on paper than it does on Muranos, and it grew on me mainly because of the name.

Anyway, all this is just backstory for my first experiments in synesthesia. I'd noticed that some of the crayon colors reminded me of people and it fascinated me. My next big story venture included the thought that silver people were evil and gold people were good, and a whole string of episodic adventures intended to relate to the essences of different colors. (I never got the notebook back from my red-and-purple friend.) Lurking in the master sequence I've been sitting on since a year after that, there's a bunch of magical little colored pebbles that don't work unless the person using them picks a color suited to their personality. In that one, red people are evil and you can't be black or white. But having a red aura isn't evil, just a red personality. And a red aura plus a yellow aura sometimes equals a blue aura, and then things really get interesting.

So all this is relevant now mainly because I'm trying to figure how much synesthesia to endow a fanfic character with, and of what kind. I'm thinking I need to try something different and have her think in sounds rather than colors. I'd like to do shapes or objects, but I need to read Zero Girl first so I don't inadvertently copy bits. I need to nail this down before I try to write her POV so I don't end up having to retcon my own stuff. The real trick, though, is going to be setting up the rules while not driving myself nuts with overly auditory thinking.