Character Playlist: Angel
Character art by Mr. K.
Angel began as an idea I had for a D&D character that I never got to really try out. And like some of my best D&D character ideas, she was born out of me thinking through the narrative implications of some in-game mechanics. Namely, in 5th Edition, there’s this lineage called the scourge aasimar, which are these heaven-touched humans who can manifest divine power so strong and brilliant it burns everything around them—including themselves.
Add on the fact that aasimar have a guardian angel constantly nagging them to go fight evil, and I got to wondering what it would feel like to have this burden just thrust onto you by the cosmos: power so strong it hurts you, and an agent of heaven constantly trying to talk you into an incredibly dangerous and largely thankless line of work. I imagined someone who resented the role they’d been cast into, tried to ignore and reject it only to find themselves ultimately embodying it, but in their own way.
And then, like I said, that character never really found a game to be played out, so she sat on my mental shelf for a while until she finally turned up in the manuscript of They Met in a Tavern. She’s had some alterations from that initial conception—mostly just my own worldbuilding weirdness about how angels and the heavens work—but she remains fundamentally the same concept. The reluctant hero with a chip on her shoulder from all the divine power and expectation she got saddled with at birth, rising to the occasion on her own terms.
“Born for This” — The Score
Angel’s journey to be a hero began the day she was born.
“like that” — Bae Miller
Spite might not be the healthiest motivation, but its been one of the most consistent in Angel’s life, and there’s a reason for that. The more people looked down on her, the more determined she was to make something of herself.
“Nightmare” — Halsey
Angel’s freelancer name is an act of deliberate irony and defiance. Being what she is led to a lot of people having a lot of expectations of her, which she very often did not meet. Taking a name that should have stood for something holy and disciplined and embodying it as her normal, drinking, swearing, short-tempered self was her way of sticking it to everyone who thought she should be something else—“I’m your Angel. This is what you get. Deal with it.”
Also, I just can’t listen to this song without seeing Angel throw a haymaker with every beat drop.
“All The Things She Said” — t.A.T.u
One of the reasons I do these playlists is to show off sides to the characters that didn’t make it into the page. Angel has fallen in love exactly once in her life, and thinking about that girl still hurts her.
“Traitor” — Daughtry
Most of Angel’s bitterness is born out of a sense of betrayal. It’s more than just being hurt. It’s being hurt by people she thought would have her back.
“Sabotage” — Bebe Rexha
As done dirty by others as Angel has been, deep down, I think she also recognizes that the one common denominator in every good thing she ever lost was herself.
“Those Nights” — Skillet
The Starbreakers broke Angel’s heart. But you can’t break someone’s heart unless, at some point before, they made you love them.
“Praying” — Kesha
This song is such a cleansing, cathartic experience centered around coming out the other side of being wronged, and “wishing the best” for the person who hurt you by wishing they were a completely different person.
“My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)” — Fall Out Boy
Action scenes have always been a pretty major component of my writing, and Angel is one of my favorite to write for extremely juvenile reasons. Sometimes, I just want to kick back, turn off my brain, and get hyped for the Strongest Characters™ competing against each other to throw the Biggest Punch™. I love writing powerful characters wrecking shop.
“Unbreakable” — Fireflight
What doesn’t kill you…
“Headstrong” by Trapt barely didn’t make the cut, but in my defense, it was cut to fit in one of the more sensitive-side songs, which I think really round out the whole place. This playlist was my first time where I put real effort into telling a cohesive story with the sequencing of the playlist too, so I’d be curious to know if that worked at all.
Angel is one of the main characters of my debut fantasy novel, They Met in a Tavern, which releases August 10, 2021. You can get your copy here.