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MEME MONDAY: FEAR & DESIRE
Alright, guys, it's Monday, the start of a new week. Hopefully everyone's enjoying the winter season so far, and hasn't been getting too much snow (or too much sun, for those in the southern hemispheres)! To brighten up the Monday blues, here's what'll hopefully be the first of many themed discussion days.
People are, ofc, fully welcome to post details about their characters outside of these! These are just to encourage conversation and help people open up on discussing their characters. :)
For our FIRST MEME MONDAY, tell us about your character's fears and desires! Feel free to do several characters, or to do just one - it's up to you. :] Similarly, feel free to answer whichever of the questions you prefer, or all of them.
People are, ofc, fully welcome to post details about their characters outside of these! These are just to encourage conversation and help people open up on discussing their characters. :)
For our FIRST MEME MONDAY, tell us about your character's fears and desires! Feel free to do several characters, or to do just one - it's up to you. :] Similarly, feel free to answer whichever of the questions you prefer, or all of them.
- What's their biggest fear? Is there anything that makes them scared? Why? And if not, what inspires their bravery?
- What's their greatest desire? Do they have a goal in life, or are they just drifting along? If so, what motivates them in either case?
- And on a player-level: what are your favorite motivations for characters? Are there certain goals that you love reading about - self-serving ambition, trolls that live for their quadrants, etc, etc? Are there any fears that you love to write?
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As for that last one, probably my favorite category of character drive is "Feels really strongly sbout The Thing and determined to make it everyone else's problem too" See also: Steve Rodgers and Nazi-Punching, Utena and her princely ideals, Anders and mage freedom, Eridan and his faith crisis. Even when those characters aren't good people they're still great to watch because they are by nature passionate as hell and great movers in the plot
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And ooo. Okay, I also love those ideals, ngl! Utena's arc in RGU was so satisfying in part in that.. her utter commitment and focus on the goal forced reactions from every single other cast member, and caused ripples through their plotlines as a result. It's hard to get that sort of effect with casts sometimes, but it's so satisfying when it's done right?
(You should further expand on Eridan's faith crisis at some point, if you feel like it! I've never given that aspect of him much thought, but I am curious on your perspective. :D)
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(it's also occuring to me very late that "feels really strongly about a thing and making it everyone's problem" is basically the serkets in a nutshell. Also feferi, meenah, and probably damara)
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Tuzuki: Getting caught, obviously. Whatever she did, I don't think she regrets it, but she also doesn't know how or want to deal with anythe consequences. She skips town, she keeps running, she finds another name and sign, and doesn't have to think about what she did beyond making it out alive.
Aranda: Loneliness. She can't stand the idea of not having friends. It's part of what drives the upper layers of generic murderous highschool mean girl -- she doesn't want to be left out, and she'll often act like an ass if it means people will hang out with her.
Kaoboe: He's still very young, so his concerns lie more in not being able to do enough for the empire, and the realization that the world he's expecting is just fiction. He wants to be the cowboy sheriff dude like in his movies, and he's in for a harsh awakening when he sees the alien frontier firsthand (and how rare it is for a burgundy like himself to get any kind of credit... for anything...)
DESIRES:
Tuzuki: Finding some way to completely leave her past behind, to successfully disguise herself as someone else and stay that way forever. Preferably away from the brooding caverns, too.
Aranda: She'd want actual friends if she understood the concept of people being around her for reasons other than quadrants or fear (and rarely the latter.) Not having to see her flushcrush look sad every time Aranda kills some rustie or another would be nice, too.
Kaoboe: To meet an actual alien, and either feel completely justified in killing it, or being able to hide it in his house like in a heist film (he'd only try this because he lives in the middle of nowhere and might get away with it for a while.)
OTHER STUFF:
I really likes characters who start out fully planning to betray/assassinate/whatever another character, but end up slowly feeling worse and more conflicted about the idea, and eventually switch sides (or at least ditch whoever told them to do this, if it wasn't their idea) to avoid going through with it. I'm also a bit fond of characters who end up obsessing over some single stupid thing because they need SOMETHING to aim for, and proceed to do the stupid thing by the end of the story, through sheer determination and ridiculousness.
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2) Loneliness (and neediness in general) is always a fun character trait, tbh - it can feed into so many different types of reactions, and bounce off of other characters so well. (But important question: does the acting like an ass manage to cancel out the high school mean girl in getting people to hang out?)
3) AW, OH NO. qnq
And oooh. I love the desires! Do you know why Tuzuki wants free from the brooding caverns yet?
.. and oh my god @ Aranda.
I feel like the "character is going to do evil task - starts feeling guilty - switches side" is such a classic trope, and I love it a lot. It's just.. narratively satisfying, tbh!
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The high school mean girl thing... I'm still making some stuff up as I go, but the main idea was... you know that one plot you see sometimes, especially in works for kids, talking about peer pressure? That one plot where the protagonist wants to hang out with the Cool KidsTM and the cool kids go "Well, if you wanna hang with us you first gotta ditch your loser friend/beat up another kid we don't like/egg someone's house/help us rob a convenience store"? (And the protagonist is supposed to back out at the last minute because they're a good kid, but real kids sometimes don't.)
Aranda's origin story is basically that. She became one of the lackeys in the highblood clique in her school/area/whatever, and is now sorta the Alpha Bitch's right-hand-gal. Maybe even thinks of their relationship as a quadrant thing. Either way she's powerful socially, but still not at the top, which is why her acting like an ass still comes from a need to be validated and feel like she has friends. Unfortunately, the paradigm of being an asshole to people below you on the ladder to get Friendship Points from the people above her appears to be the default for highbloods, and it's the only system she knows.
And yeah, Kaoboe is in for sad times. I have a little more info on him here.
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And yeah, Kaoboe definitely wants to be the action film dude, a little like Jake in that sense. He's in the middle of a phase where he roleplays as the "town sheriff" for his little hive (kid lives out in sandfrick nowhere), shooting wildlife for practice while pretending they're "aliens resisting the glorious alternian empire" or whatever. It's cute. His aim is getting very good.
SLIDING INTO HOME BASE-
*What's their biggest fear? Is there anything that makes them scared? Why? And if not, what inspires their bravery?
Aleida: Being hated or disliked! Al has refined themselves to be as likeable (or non-threatening) as possible. They work to keep a disarming tone, to move slowly and gracefully, and to keep their temper in check. So "in check," actually, that they end up being kind of a doormat at times, and letting others around them get hurt because of their negligence.
Ghurab: Falling, I think... both in a literal and figurative sense. She's not afraid of heights, because she lives in a tree, on a planet of really *big* trees, but she is afraid of the concept of falling from that height. She's also afraid of falling, figuratively, so if she ever ends up in love with someone (and I hope she will), she's gonna be *terrified* of that. She likes to have everything working function-first, and all her relationships are built that way too, they're all fairly loveless. Losing that functionality, and actually having something to lose, isn't her jam.
*What's their greatest desire? Do they have a goal in life, or are they just drifting along? If so, what motivates them in either case?
Al: Al acts like they're drifting, but in reality, their greatest desire is... well, the inverse of their greatest fear. They want to be liked, so, to achieve that, they try to act like nothing bothers them, and that they don't want anything in particular. They also have a secondary goal of remaining as "free" as possible!
Ghurab: I don't have a *main* plot for her yet, but I hope I will eventually. I need to work on it! But in the meantime, one of her motivations is innovation. She likes seeing how much more she can get out of her machines - how efficient, how streamlined, how ornate, etc. she can make them.
*And on a player-level: what are your favorite motivations for characters? Are there certain goals that you love reading about - self-serving ambition, trolls that live for their quadrants, etc, etc? Are there any fears that you love to write?
I really like playing characters that build out their own world! Aleida set a precedent for their planet and its government, and Ghurab built onto the idea of Alternian colonies. I like finding small niches in worldbuilding and going "what if...?" And then turning that into a character.
Re: SLIDING INTO HOME BASE-
Re: SLIDING INTO HOME BASE-