Sexy golden eyes. Long slender legs. The indescribable charisma of a goddess. Not to mention magic skills to rival Lina's own. At first glance, Dera Tajied alias Demeter seems to have it all - beauty and brain and brawn. And if that's not enough, she even has Xelloss for a brother and Zelgadis for an ex-lover! There are very few female Slayers fans who wouldn't kill to be her. (Including myself ... ~~;)
Demeter existed before I even knew about Slayers. When I first moved to Korea at the age of thirteen, I was rather out of it, to say the least. Moving to another country after living in the US for all your life is no joke, especially to a country like Korea. During that hard period of time, I built a wall between the real world and myself and started writing fantasy novels. I created another universe with four worlds (very similar to Slayers - coincedence?) and made the "Sixth Dimension" a world of fantasy, ruled by gods and goddesses, lived in by elves and fairies and dragons and every other clan that ever existed. And so Demeter was born.
My original motive in creating Demeter was to create a being that was perfect and yet imperfect. A goddess with a thread of mortal blood that would make her different from her immortal brothers and sisters, and that eventually would drive her to run away from Mt. Olymous. In a sense, I was writing about myself - someone who I was and someone who I wanted to be. A girl that was the same as everyone around her and yet different in a very vital way. I was Korean like all the students around me, without a drop of foriegn blood, and yet I could not mingle with them. In the same way, I made Demeter an outsider, a loner, someone different from the others around her. Of course, later on I eventually adjusted, but before I did I filled five notebooks with stories about Demeter and her adventure off Mt. Olympus.
::takes out soapbox and cautiously steps on it::
Many people who read my fan fics somehow resent Demeter as someone too perfect. She's smart, beautiful, has a past with Zelgadis, is sister to Xelloss, knows how to use a sword almost as well as Zelgadis or Gourry, and can cast up to Raw Tilt in Astral magic and Lagner Blade in Black magic. I won't deny there are times when I tend to get carried away with Demeter's abilities while I write my fan fics. But come on people, I'm not the only one that does that! It's impossible to restrict a chaarcter you made all the time, for the very fact that you made it. All characters made by fans and put in fan fics are some degree of self-insertion. But anyway, Demeter is not perfect - she is tied by rules and regulations and cannot always help her friends. And there are some that point out the fact that she is a goddess, but Demeter cannot fight as a goddess unless she has permission from Cephid.
Demeter is Demeter, but she is also me and you and all humans who feel themselves alone in the world one time or another. Take her for who she is as you read my fan fics, and be gentle if you still plan to flame me over her perfectness (but the very fact that you're about to flame me proves she is not perfect, ne?)
::quickly jumps off soapbox and blocks all the Dragon Slaves from irate fans::