DE: Getting through the week

[inlovewithwords]

Well, we made it to another Friday. My week, and the end of the week in general, has me thinking:

Sometimes things get overwhelming. Saving the world is as draining and frustrating as it is uplifting and invigorating; sometimes just plain old work gets utterly bogged down; even the nuts and bolts of being a supervillain can be unwieldy. How does your character maintain their drive and energy to achieve their goals?

Comments

[iprotectyou]

Baze was powered by pure, vigilante-style hate. He killed Imperials day in and day out, just trying to survive. Desperation was often a flavor of his week. But never fear.

Now, in Milliways, he's driven both by curiosity and a desire to make his and Chirrut's afterlives the best they can be.

[idontneedluck]

His unwavering belief in the Force, and his conviction that eventually the Empire would tire of them, have everything they came for, and leave.

He didn't count on a Death Star.

After Jedha he was following that thread of the Force straight to Scarif.

Now, he's back to relying on his belief in the Force, and doing what makes Baze happy.

[exiled_heir_of_the_eighth]

Sahaal generally relies on anger and being massively pissed off to keep him motivated in the field. In Milliways, well, he's a highly focused individual. Willpower and being stubborn generally works.

Artyom's job is saving people, so whenever he feels like he can't go on, he looks around at his fellow Metro residents and reminds himself what he's fighting for. If there's no civilians there, he pictures Anna, his partner.

Sevatar's life is pretty much doing whatever the hell he wants, across the multiverse, but when something serious is happening, he tends to rely on his sense of justice to see him through. That, and think about all the fun things he can buy with reward money.

[just_cant_lose]

Because the alternative is just feeling worse, and more bored, and more hopeless about things. He makes every plan perfect because it's easy, and not doing a proper job would be even easier. And he's completely obsessive anyway - 'can't bear an unfinished symphony' and all that, so maintaining drive and energy to achieve his goals is not difficult at all. What's difficult is finding goals that feel worthwhile in the first place.

[bjornwilde]

It has been a tough week. I'm afraid you only get answers for my two easy pups today.

Ahsoka tries meditation and connecting with the Force first. When that doesn't work, she looks to those she respects for inspiration; starting with Anakin, Rex, and Obi-Wan, then onto others like Padme, Riyo, Barriss, Tera Sinube, and Yoda. This usually works. It's funny how well, "what woudl Anakin do?" can power through a problem. (Secret, sometimes she does the opposite of what Anakin would do.)

The only time I can think of when it didn't was following Order 66 when hiding for safety became hiding from everything. The Force and circumstance eventually remind Ahsoka of her purpose and she comes back to help.

Sabine white knuckles it at this point. She is starting to learn from Kanan and Hera better means to deal but right now, she just powers through things. Denial can help. I'm sure she does throw any anger or frustration into art though.

[i_am_your_host]

Emcee lets himself crash and wallow before he can find the motivation and inspiration to do what he has to do again. He often sinks very low before his self-preservation (physically and mentally) kicks in. It's like...he needs that pit of despair. It's self-destructive and unhealthy, but this is Emcee, he's not exactly wholesome.

Pam maintains her drive and energy to achieve more shoes by not pissing Eric off so she can keep using his credit card. She's also motivated by revenge. That's always a big picker-upper.

Floki has his faith in the gods. Always his faith in the gods.

For Cassidy, it helps to not have any ambition or goals at all! Makes things so much easier for him.

[andinfluencepeople]

Clint manages it primarily by keeping his goals short-term -- he thinks about the long term way ahead of time, but in the moment & the grind he mostly focuses on the next bullet point (.. pun not initially intended).

Chuck's very used to hurry-up-and-wait, and finds mechanic work meditative. He's extremely upset about the fact that no progress has been made re: a jaeger program in milliways, but mostly because that might mean Pentecost went back and got dead.

Melinda also finds rote work meditative, and long missions are mostly driven by a quiet laser focus and lots of tai chi. She had to learn patience, but she's honed it like a weapon.

Sebastian is not sure what goals are?? That is a joke, but only barely. Sebastian invests heavily in relationships with the knowledge that this will aid in the future but with no distinct goals until an opportunity presents itself. He's good at taking advantage of opportunities. He's weirdly bad at feeling adrift unless he literally thinks the world might be a dream, so difficulty reaching goals doesn't really frustrate him (which I am guessing frustrates his sister).

Quatre handles it by always having 7+ projects running so when one gets frustrating he delegates the boring parts and goes to another. Being the boss is nice. If there is nothing to delegate, just upsetting inaction, then he goes to another and also plots revenge/very polite comments in high society situations that could never be taken for incisive anger!!! Nope

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato would probably say he's driven by duty and protecting people, and that's probably 85% true, but the remaining 15% is that he's propped up by his friends and by the drive both to protect them and to be useful to them.

Both of his big downward spirals in 01 are driven by some sort of threat to that: Thinking Taichi's dead, along with Sora and Koushiro leaving the group, drags him into a 'I guess we're never going to leave and also effort is pointless' funk in the Vamdemon arc; and a combination of friends dying, a series of failures on his part to protect people, and a few other related things eventually makes him actively sabotage the group.

Gabumon is a lot like Yamato in that he's driven by a desire to protect and be useful to people around him (in this case, both Yamato and the other 'mons, the latter of which tend to turn to him for advice a lot), but he doesn't hinge his entire identity on it the way Yamato does.

(Although all the Digimon have enormous drive anyway: They all waited for literally thousands of years for their partners to arrive and never lost sight of their purpose, after all.)

[iprotectyou]

Aww, the thought of the other Digimon turning to Gabumon for advice is adorable.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

He is their wise elder. *solemn* Of sorts, at least.

[for_everyone]

After Order 66, Kanan fell into some not-great coping methods, such as drinking too much, short-term relationships, etc. Once he met Hera he adopted some better ways of dealing, particularly in finding inspiration from others and, once he started tapping into his Force abilities again, meditating and seeking guidance from his holocron.

Hera, on the other hand . . . doesn't really need that much to maintain her motivation. She is absolutely relentless, like the energizer bunny of rebellion. Her parents were radical freedom fighters, and her entire life has involved witnessing one kind of insurgency after another – while she can imagine some future beyond that, she also just has nothing else to fall back on. She's just not going to give up, ever. If she's feeling overwhelmed, she might do some kind of comfort work, like maintenance on Chopper or her ship, but those are really ways to calm herself down, rather than to reenergize her.

[childofrebellion]

For Cassian, he notes every weakness in the Empire and never stops working in one way or another. Being able to fly and find moments of freedom help give him new energy as do when he can beat up a stormtrooper. The cleaner victories move him forward as the dark ones pull him down. Basically he never stops working and believes in hope and that the Rebellion can bring down the Empire. The dark side of this is he doesn't truly believe he'll be there to see it, but that it will happen. As with Hera above, he really doesn't have anything else, this is all he's ever known.

Quentin doesn't really need a drive to do what he needs to but video games with Raj and watching tv with everyone give him hope that Toby will do better.

Charles takes hope in the younger mutants though on his dark days, he drinks too much and gets lost in his work.

My others don't really need to be driven, duty is ingrained in Sameth and Ivan, both of them sometimes need pushes for specific things but Sameth loves to make things. Ivan likes people and his job which is what he does for Barrayar.

William has always been working and protecting his family, his issue is more knowing when to stop. When things feel bad and hopeless, he gets angry but its always directed outward.

Demeter can always find what's growing and that gives her energy.

Moist has trouble when he's not in the midst of doing something.

Tumnus is constantly pushed to do more and inspired by the Pevensies and seeing Narnia flourish once more.

Will S. has always been driven forward by love of his home.

[student_of_impossibility]

Only energy for two of mine today.

Evelyn mostly stays driven, even pre-Inquisition, by not wanting to die, and not wanting other people to die. Being overwhelmed is for people who aren't under constant threat of dying. Or worse. There's always worse than dying, in Thedas.

Tavi has coping mechanisms, thankfully, pacing himself with breathers that are fun (family, archaeology, mad engineering, and with Milliways he can add "taking time that no one notices to de-stress and maybe do other people's intelligence analysis for them what do you mean that's work") and of having learned through heart-rending observation not to drive himself into the ground completely, but he thinks of it as not physically burning out. Emotionally, he has problems recognizing what 'overwhelmed' means. It falls under something he heard once about "no time or right to self-pity." Overwhelmed is for other people. He doesn't have the luxury of less than relentless.