The Blog of Roon

I wouldn’t have suggested a WISH topic I didn’t have an answer for. So let me tell you about how I found Juskinah.

Juskinah is the central character of the Al-Qadim campaign I play with my husband. She is a Northerner who found her way into Zakhara and was adopted into a major nomad tribe.

One Saturday afternoon in late spring the weather was looking a mite threatening, so I turned on the TV to see if there were any alerts up. I flipped to a tennis match and was trying to sort out the tiny type on the crawler across the screen when—Good heavens, who is that on the court?

A woman of medium height: heavy-shouldered, sturdy and muscular. A tanned, androgynous oval face with broad forehead, dark heavy eyebrows, and strong jaw. Big hands. Brown hair worn long and loose. And—no, it can’t be—yes, it is—green eyes. Green eyes! She is Juskinah.

Figured out who I mean, anyone? It took me a few minutes’ watching before I found out who she was. I would have picked out the name faster if I hadn’t been calling excitedly for my husband to come out from the office and see Juskinah. Her name is Amélie Mauresmo. All the good pictures I can find of her are copyrighted, but here is a good closeup from Altosport (beware popups), which has the best photos of Ms. Mauresmo I can find just now. (Ms. Mauresmo’s official site doesn’t have many good pictures at all, unfortunately.)

This is the only time I’ve ever had such a strong reaction to a person. I not infrequently see people who have individual physical characteristics that I think of in my characters; I saw someone on the bus once who has Afletana’s white-blonde hair. I didn’t know that hair that color turned honey-dark when in shadow, but now I do.

I think it’s partly that Juskinah is the most physical of all the characters I’ve ever played. I tend away from the warrior-types and toward the priestesses and magic-slingers. When I saw someone with the right kind of androgyny (Juskinah has passed for a man at times; I first saw Ms. Mauresmo in closeup, and I wasn’t sure for a moment if this was a men’s or women’s match) and physicality, I was just hooked. Wow.

I don’t follow tennis, but I will stop whatever I’m doing if there’s a Mauresmo match on TV. I think she’s at the US Open at the moment. I should check to see if she’s still in play.

Oh, and while I’m at it—am I the only person in creation who took one look at ice-dancer Marina Anissina and cried, “Hey! That’s Jirel of Joiry!”

This entry was posted on Friday, August 30th, 2002 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.