December Prompt Meme: Heraldic Gifts

My prompt for the 12th is from kowe: "If you could have one of the gifts/talents found in Mercedes Lackey's world, what would it be and why?"

Short answer: I wanna be a super-speshul little Heraldic snowflake with five Gifts!

( Gifts and elaboration below the cut! )

December Prompt Meme: Good Characters

My prompt for the 13th was supplied by blnchflr, who asked me to talk about "Characters who are Good whom you like (unless you don't like any Good characters)."

I spent about three days trying to work out an answer to this one, only to belatedly realise that I may be overthinking it -- I kept trying to figure out the difference between good and Good, and it only occurred to me yesterday that maybe the uppercase was just an attempt to distinguish "a morally good character" from "a good character" in the sense of well-written. *facepalming* blnchflr, feel free to chime in with your intentions!

( Some thoughts below the cut! )

Well, that got long, and kind of turned into a "discuss two tropes you've grown to hate" meta more so than one on good characters and goodness! Sorry. *sheepish* In summary: I have a lot of ~feelings~ about the notion of "Good People" and characters who think they belong in that category, most of which are bound up in the very shallow, platitude-y way that many canons apply it.


Edit: Just discovered my HTML was borked, and half this entry never showed up! Welp. Fixed now, and I did a bunch of editing, too. Hope somebody notices!