ways_back_room | DE: A mind like a diamond

I have two immortals who love life!

... and chose to show it in very different ways

I just pick them based on who appeals to me, so I'm throwing mine to the community to tell me what they see in common. (And anyone who says "monks" gets pelted with fruit.)

Athelstan
Giovanni
Michael Carpenter
Jonathan Levinson
Nancy (Doctor Who)
Cadfael
Roshaun
Gavroche
Ichabod
Norrington

A lot of them are caretakers, aren't they?
As in wanting to take care of -

*eyes list*

...actually, yes. All of them, to some degree, possibly excepting Norrington, and he's a whole other type - and an orchestra just started playing the Pirates of the Caribbean theme outside the window. What is this I don't even.

Edited 2015-02-02 19:59 (UTC)

Ha!

I recently realized that mine are all slow to trust, and are typically very restrained emotionally. Beyond that, I couldn't really say; anyone else noticed things?

I have, on the whole, the Bad Life Choices crew.

Ace: Is the epitome if bad life choices - blowing up bits of her school, running into trouble whenever she can, the entire Cheetah mess... she's the poster child.

Oswin: Isn't much better. She climbed out of a perfectly intact survival pod with other people around and everything and wandered off on an unknown planet. And ran into Daleks. At least everyone else in their human zombie-ness didn't know how much their life sucked, 'cause they were pretty much dead. Clara isn't at all better. In fact, she's worse, she earned the 'bad life choices' icon.

Katya: So, Tiger Cub, when faced with a Dark Other who mysteriously and somewhat alarmingly seems significantly more powerful every time you run into him, and who seems to be purposefully baiting you, you... yeah, attack him in an unauthorized street brawl. Yes. That's... that's going to go so well.

Glorfindel: Balrog. Balrog, and then coming back to Arda. The Nazgul, the Witch-King... I'm sensing a pattern here, sir.

Bones: New!Movie-canon, at least he'd have an excuse, but no, this guy's from the original series, and frankly, your wife divorcing you (no matter how ugly the divorce) should not be a catalyst that eventually leads you to a deep-space exploration mission when you frankly hate space travel and all that implies. Really. You have no one to blame but yourself.

Jemma: ... Honey. Dear. Love. Why the heck do you want to go out into the field? Admittedly, it's probably why you survived Hydra coming back, things didn't go well at SciOps, but... Fitz is right, mobile flying circus ahoy (sorry May).

Sam: So far, in canon that she's gone through in bar, this does not apply to her... but yeah. Um. So, she's going to go back, and the next few days will put her square in this category. Sam - for the record, you really should have died. Seriously.

William: He might be the only one this doesn't entirely apply to - joining the Navy and going on deck when that cannon ball ripped through weren't choices he made alone or could have avoided, and his... rather shocking bloodthirstiness during battle is kind of expected of him. Even if he's the most adorable itty bitty midshipman ever.

I think I'm going to go with "brocken, yet functional and wanting to make the world better because of it".

Jess: Pops experimented on her while she was in utero. Later, she was brainwashed and raised by HYDRA to be an assassin. She broke free and made her own life with the white hats but she hasn't really spent any time dealing with any of that.

Andrea: A childhood of physical abuse and now she's hiding who she is from the organization she's serving in while actively ignoring her nature. But she fights to save innocent lives.

Ethan: Not even considering the full moon curse, he seems to be carrying a lot of guilt over the whole sale slaughter and indoctrination of the Native Americans peoples. Still, he steps up to help Vanessa and seemingly saves her soul.

Quinlan: Got to experience his parents death first hand thanks to his racial psychometry and his great aunt's attempts to ruin him for the jedi. This fear of death plagues him for most of his life and leaves him vulnerable to the Dark Side. Still, he clings to the Light Side and fights for the preservation of the Republic.

More later, I've a dentist appointment.

And my outliers
Hank: Is very close to the above but he doesn't really have true trauma in his past. Angst for his mutation, sure, but his parents and childhood were pretty good, aside from sticking out as a brain weirdo and going to college at too early an age, from a sociology POV.

Selina: Selfish survivor, who nonetheless has a heart of gold. As long as she's not in any apparent danger, she'll help others.

Sam: Had trauma but worked through it. Likely the healthiest of my lot really.

Tybalt: Has had his fair share of trauma but has also had a very long time to heal from it.

I think ultimately, if I were to have a type it would be heroes (however reluctantly or selfishly) with at least a hint of tragedy.

In terms of all characters I have played anywhere, my main type is "Neutral Good Paladin" with a subtype for "who's really really good at punching things." Nita and Beverly both fit in the first category, although Nita edges a little more towards Lawful Good, I guess.

Kim and Epimetheus are also fundamentally good people who want to help others ... sort of. But Nita and Beverly take a broad view of who they should help (the whole Universe, civilians, colleagues) and are willing to put themselves in harm's way on a not infrequent basis. Kim and Epimetheus, meanwhile, are narrowly focused on helping themselves first and then people close to them. Epimetheus will go to bat for Prometheus (these days) (probably), and Kim will literally flip a table to protect Mairelon, but they're pretty risk-averse otherwise. They wish the universe well in a general kind of way, though, and wouldn't mind making it a better place.

Mostly mildly Chaotic, strongly Good, deeply passionate, crusader types. And I seem to split evenly between 'vanilla human' and 'over-powered to demi-god or god levels.' Like, almost down the middle. Oh, also often with some kind of reckless streak, and utter determination. Most of them don't know how to back off anything.

And most have some deep insecurity they need to overcome. And all incredibly idealistic. Many care about fundamental truths, some exposing them. And justice, they all believe in justice.

And, well, a mild disregard for the meaning of 'impossible.'

EDIT PSA: Oh, by the way, if anyone wants a Tavi tag today, they should nudge me.

Edited 2015-02-02 19:01 (UTC)

*hand shoots up*

(But I have no current post except Nancy's, unless you want to go digging.)

I am willing to dig if you want me to, as I am mostly just not in the mood for an EP. Who do you want me to dig for?

Well, Athelstan's the one with the most posts, so pick one that interests you?

When I briefly played

2goodarms in a sandbox, I joked that my very specific type is self-loathing amputees who lead massive rebellions.

(I still keep waffling on whether or not to app him. So little free time! So much I fell down on even in the short time I sandboxed him! But...oh, Curtis.)

I don't... really... know. I mean, I can tell why I like certain characters: I have a huge thing for stories where people find themselves defined by what others project onto them, and have difficulty navigating their own identities within that, so I'm not surprised I attached to Will. I like a lot of characters with absent parents and/or weird childhoods, but I feel like that's really a product of how frequently that happens in fiction, anyway. I guess maybe I have a thing for ... possibly morally ambiguous characters who have some major, influential, definitely evil figure in their life, who has likely betrayed them in some way, and who continues to try to sway them along to their side, but they're almost always repudiated. But I feel like I'm really making trying to stretch that to make it fit a lot of my characters – I think it's really a product of my watching Sailor Moon as a kid and loving Sailor Saturn, and therefore attaching to her mad-scientist's-beautiful-daughter-daddy's-little-villain kind of deal. And I think that's why I attached to Elle and, to a lesser degree, Asami.

So really, I don't know. I may also sort of like having different characters. In fact if I can get my head together to do it, I actually like threading Asami and Will at the same time, as they're so different that having that strong contrast in my head can be helpful for me.

Mine all seem to be supernatural types, I think.

What do you guys think?

Tegid Tathal

Death from Supernatural

Daniel Jackson

Vala Maldonado

Tasselhoff Burrfoot

Naruto

Autocorrect chewed on your comment, I think. It chewed up Mal Doran and spit out Maldonado.

Um, perhaps loud opinionated folk? But Daniel is quiet. Except maybe about the whole ancient aliens thing.

Tass is openionated?

Maybe about property rights :P He's very much finders keepers

He usually gives things back when someone asks.

I somehow ended up with god haters. One hates them because they are propping up a world and existence that encourages eternal suffering and endless cycles of pain and pretends these things are good, the other hates them because no one that flawed and fickle should have that sort of power. The mistakes gods make and the tantrums they go through are too grand.

In other words, she would agree with this sentiment:

I used to have more medieval guys. But even with my current roster, the element of deliberate values dissonance is strong. Also, most of my characters are from the past, except Hannibal and Father Harman, and even with them, their values aren't exactly modern...

Cocky, dark-haired asshole boys who have less than an hour of screen time between them and end up with horrible things along the Break The Haughty trope. Caretakers, too, if you squint.

Alana is a total outlier.

People with phenomenal cosmic power who take care in using it, like to protect people, and are perfectly fine with morally grey decisions when one stays aware that they are morally grey.

And then there's Wonder Woman. And Nynaeve.

And way on the other side is Galadan, who really only cares about a select group of people and the rest of creation can go hang, except where would those people he likes live?

At one point in time my thing was very definitely animal people. Alas only Galadan and Raven are left of that contingent. And Liranan does not count.

Emotionally repressed young men who have very little screentime.

I mean, Yugo is sweet and gentle and enthusiastic to a degree that nobody actually is, and his Phantom is a mess of totally uncontrolled, rapidly changing emotions.

Sherral has refined not talking about his emotions and bottling them up down to an art form over years of being a child soldier (and working under Zecht, who is also an absolute master of avoiding facing his emotions).

Wan is probably the most emotionally healthy of the bunch, but even he tends to spring back from horrible events a little too quickly to not be at least slightly an act.

Tragic heroes who are partly if not wholly responsible for the death of a loved one and are Chosen in some way. (Lucas had an innate ability to pull Needles, Lohengrin is the original Knight in Shining Armor, and Mirai is the last person with blood like hers.)

In addition, Lucas and Mirai are teenagers, the last members of their families (here anyway), bad at lying, and love plants. I've said it before about the last one and I'll say it again: Milliways is gradually turning into this elaborate game of determining which one of my characters will be looking after the plants.

I started off in the bar with a serious bent towards the bad guys, then felt like I was veering more into 'asshole with a heart of gold' territory (hi, Gene), and currently I feel more like I'm back in bad guy land.

On the other hand, there's Valjean. He's good enough to balance out the flaws of all the others combined.

Lets see:

Outright good

Jean Valjean

Flawed hero/good

Gene Hunt
Bruce Wayne
Bruce Banner?
Courfeyrac

Evil of the good

Javert

Outright bad (and severely mentally unstable)

Pearly Soames
Jim Moriarty

How did I get back up to eight pups? Awful. Anyway, it looks like I'm still more in good guy territory right now; Bruce Banner is not flawed in the way BW and Gene are (both kind of assholes in different ways), and Courfeyrac could almost be outright good, if it weren't for the fact he's a womanising cad who shoots soldiers in the street, and is OK with it. Maybe I should have another category for those two, because they don't reach Valjean levels of good, and so he was always going to have that category to himself.

Javert gets a category to himself for being so 'good' he's actively bad, and doesn't (didn't) even realise it. Who knows where he'll end up, though I like to think he'll be steered towards the light in the end.

Pearly and Jim are never going to redeem themselves - so by using extremes of the scale, I've still got more outright bad than good. Well, whatever, I think it's clear that my 'type' tends to be people who are OK with doing bad things in the name of the greater good, or else are just OK with doing bad things, either by design or ignorance. Only Banner and Valjean will actively avoid hurting people at all costs (though Banner has the safety net of knowing he can't be hurt from anything he does or refuses to do, while Valjean just throws himself in front of guns/into the sea/eye-deep in sewage, and lets what will happen, happen. He remains the only truly selfless 'good' on the list).

Let's have a look at my current roster, now that I'm no longer particularly top-heavy on functional immortals.

Gordon Freeman
Adrian Shephard
Ellen Park
El Santo
Varric Tethras
Edward Kenway
Stacker Pentecost
And I apped Fawkes from Fallout 3 this month.

Pretty much all of them are violently protective to great degree, although Edward's obsession with treasure (particularly the Observatory, his canonical goal for most of AC IV) makes him a standout for 9/10 of his canon. Gordon, Shephard, and Ellen all started off as relatively ordinary examples of their kind before horrifically abnormal circumstances kicked them upstairs, hard; I'm fond of characters like that in general. Stacker Pentecost and Santo don't count towards that, I think. Stacker does not really give off the vibe of someone who had been ordinary anything, ever, and my headcanon background for Santo was that he took up the Silver Mask as soon as he was old enough to receive it from its retiring former wearer. On the other hand, they're both uniformed and intensely loyal defenders of the public, even if Santo's uniform is sparkly and often involves sequined capes. Gordon's not exactly uniformed, but the HEV suit does put him firmly between humanity and whatever is trying to kill them.

Varric and Edward Kenway both stand out a bit as cheerfully avaricious and self-interested. Varric, however, is far more loyal to his friends than anything else, and is probably more self-aware than Edward, who has to go through 3/4 of his canon and have people leave him and die before he realizes how much of a jerkass he's been.

Fawkes has no real background in game; I've used cut content dummied out of Fallout 3 as his background. Even without it, though, he falls into the same vein as Gordon et al, in that he's intensely loyal and prone to massive protective violence; when you meet him the second time he's found a Gatling laser and is highly enthusiastic about how much evil he can eradicate with it, and will only follow you if you have good Karma. Also like a lot of the others, he's highly educated, although unlike Gordon and Stacker he's entirely self-taught, having spent a long, long time in solitary confinement with only a database terminal for company. The dummied out content indicates that he was originally an ordinary Vault 87 security guard before things went to hell, so add another one to the 'ordinary person in uniform who was subjected to unbelievable things and wound up protecting and fighting for other people as a result' roster.

As they say, I may have a type.

Yay for Fawkes! I hope I can get Hank to furry while he is in bar. Could make for some fascinating threads.

I've only got the one ... and a sandbox-only pup or two... so I'm not sure if I can divine a type. Then again, if I take Sariel's friends as well as herself into account, it looks rather like I've got a bent toward soldier-types, especially the ones aware of their choice to and reasons to serve. There's a tendency toward the not particularly emotionally forthcoming, as well, though this does not at all mean repressed.

Makosa is something of an outlier; he's quiet, but he's got a tendency to reveal his emotions in more obvious ways than Sariel. On the other hand, he's a more traditional variety of soldier-type, even though mindfulness of his actions still very much applies (hi, civilians turned resistance fighters amid an active occupation).

Oh, and two other flipping obvious things about any of mine: Minor characters are so very much love, and so are active polyglots. See also half my originals and nearly all the already-fictional characters I write about.

I tend to gravitate toward damaged (usually addiction or emotional trauma); using an external or overblown persona to mask said damage; distant and reluctant to get close to or express their feelings for other people; yet despite all this, possessing an innate resilience and passion.

Used to be the answer was, flat-out, DEADPAN STOICS AND ALSO RIVER. *laughing* Let's see what the current roster shakes out to...

- Enjolras
- Cosette
- Thor
- Trowa
- Clare
- River
- Regan

Two ridiculously overpowered (Thor, Clare), three normal humans (Enjolras, Cosette, Regan), with two in the middle (River and Trowa, who are at peak-of-human-badassery levels, River with various psychic powers and Trowa who might ambiguously have a little.) That's more evenly distributed than I thought, actually.

- Not from modern-day Earth. (I've played a couple who were, but they were definitely the minority.) I, uh, I think I like culture-building perhaps a little.
- Self-control is in some way important, and either deeply ingrained or something they have a complicated relationship with.
- Strong sense of duty.
- Extremely loyal
- Good people who stand up for others and for what they see as The Side Of Good, but who are very pragmatic and often willing to do fairly harsh things in the service of that. Nonetheless, people with an extremely strong internal moral compass. (Regan is my outlier here, a bit.)
- Some kind of power or privilege, often including fighting skill, which they are extremely aware of and pay attention to; in general, awareness of power dynamics. (Cosette is sort of my outlier here, though not entirely.)
- You know, yes, a lot of stoics still. They may be chatty or silent, extroverted or introverted, but they keep a lot of things deep inside. (River is my outlier here, but she has a complicated relationship to her inability to keep her feelings off her face, so.) If they're hurting, they pick carefully who they show that to, and they're all able to do that.
- Relatedly, and also related to the loyalty thing: support networks. All of them have at least one person they trust very deeply, and often multiple.

Edited 2015-02-03 14:09 (UTC)

Or, short form: "They're not deadpan stoics, Gen, they're EARNEST PEOPLE WITH A CAUSE who are sometimes deadpan stoics about it," said

skygiants yesterday. She is, uh. Not wrong!

No wonder River and Sariel get along. XD

I have two characters on my Milli-roster and a handful more who I considered apping at some point, and the trend seems to be some combination of 'spooky, nonhuman, from web media'.

I love this DE so late answer as I was traveling yesterday.

My type tends to be the ones who support the hero, are figuring themselves out and where they fit in the world. Also big old sense of duty, that's true for most of them in some variation with my main outlier before Moist. Weirdly, quite a few monarchists in some shape or form or ones from feudal like societies. Mainly not from the modern world and if they are then its one that's not normal as I love culture clash and the past is another world.

Other than Demeter and Sameth, most of them aren't too powered up, mainly baseline for their various settings.

DE: A mind like a diamond

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