Thursday DE

[needsmoreresearch]

Happy Thursday, everyone!

What makes your character trust someone? What about distrust? Are there exceptions--people they distrust and they just don't know why, or people they trust even though they really know better?

Comments

[exiled_heir_of_the_eighth]

Sahaal tends to trust people who are armed more easily, because in his view, if you're not carrying a weapon, you probably have a more effective and dangerous way to defend yourself. Using strange powers normal humans shouldn't have, being an alien or being a sentient machine are all things he distrusts.

[bjornwilde]

Sabine wants to trust everyone but has learned that is not wise. People will take advantage of that trust, especially Empires that span the galaxy. This will be causing some friction soon as her anxiety about trust gets in the way of things. Right now she's struggling with how and when to trust. I think she expects people who you can trust will be open and share details. Eventually she'll learn to gauge actions and words together, but right now it's strictly words.

I'll have to think on this for the others.

[cottoncandypink]

Wilford will trust people to behave how he expects them to behave. If this means he expects someone to stab him in the back, he'll trust them to do so, and behave around them accordingly.

As far as trusting people with his dark little secrets and vulnerabilities, that's reserved for a select few people, and will likely never willigly extend to anyone in Milliways.

[have_no_mercy]

Tess, Kylo and Sikozu are from the school of Trust No One.

Rose trusts way too easily if someone seems "nice" and "normal", but she's learning.

[cutting_edgex23]

X trusts everyone from the word 'go', it is her initial starting position on new people, particularly in situations that are not combat or crisis situations. From there she watches a person's behavior and interactions and decides whether to increase or decrease her level of trust (or the intimacy of information she will trust them with). The hurt she takes when she is wrong is never trivial, but compared to her history it's incredibly survivable. So.

She distrusts people who want to use her trust to hurt other people. Or who generally use people's trust in them to cause damage.

Ysalwen is very slow to trust. She also relies on people that are trustworthy in little things, rather than people that show off their capabilities in large things but let the little ones slip. That bothers her. She's trusted a lot of people that others wouldn't have, and a lot of that is that she trusts her own instincts about people, and she's more prone to provide opportunities for people to prove trustworthy than to write them off immediately. But it's a slow process.

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine's canonical "If you like my food, I am your friend" has gained some facets and codicils since she began coming to Milliways (Thanks, Dr. Lecter.) but she is still pretty generally friendly and relatively trusting of everyone upon meeting them, especially those who enjoy her baking, right up until the point where she is given a compelling reason not to be.

Her levels of trust usually aren't delineated by anything apart from her relationship to that person and her experience with them, and even that can get complicated. She has gotten used to a kind of conditional trust between herself and a number of people whose lifestyles and moral choices conflict with hers. Usually vampires.

[childofrebellion]

Charles cheats and uses his telepathy to help him decide if he should trust someone as it lets him look at how a person acts in the world. He tends to trust people who are clearly on the outside more easily.

Cassian doesn't trust easily at all. To win his trust is hard and he'll give it as much as he needs to. A lot of what wins his trust is someone who understands things that he can't say, fellow soldiers or people from difficult worlds. Its not how he would define what builds trust but that's what happens. Actions speak far more than words for him because he spends a lot of his time lying so knows how words can be used.

Quentin is cautious in terms of trust and what builds it for him is shared experiences and the okay of certain people.

Sameth trusts fairly easily, it helps that if something goes wrong, he knows what he can do. Also suspicion is built into the Old Kingdom and faced by how everyone touches Charter Marks to check for corruption, if you pass that then the trust is easier.

William doesn't trust people since he's had a lot of bad experiences and tends to look for someone to talk down to him or use him. To win his trust, listening to him will do a lot.

Will S. trusts more now than he used to, but the best way to gain his trust is show what you would do for your home.

Ivan's trust is built off what he knows, he uses a lot of social and political cues which means he falls back on stereotypes at times. He would like to trust people more but he knows too much about politics.

Demeter trusts quickly but when you break her trust, the consequences are awful.

Tumnus trusts very quickly.

[i_am_your_host]

All my pups have trust issues, okay.

Emcee is inherently distrustful of everyone, but he gets you to trust him first. Cassidy is the same way. They are both charming and friendly, they both observe and read people, and they get you to talk to them and more often than not you end up liking them, or at least think that they're no threat. With Emcee there's no ulterior motive, he just enjoys people's company, and is only looking to feel safe and accepted. Cassidy is a people person, too, but if he can take advantage of someone in some (mostly benign) way, he would.

Emcee is not that quick to open up about himself, and neither is Cassidy. They both prefer to talk about their hedonistic lifestyles and all the fun they have. It's a mask that they wear. The only time they let anyone have a peek behind the mask is if they feel they've made some sort of connection with you, because opening up about certain things can backfire.

Pam. She trusts absolutely NOBODY, except for Eric, and even that kind of trust between vampires has its own implications. There's a quote from the show, "The only vampire a vampire can trust is the one he made." Which isn't entirely true, as vampires often turn on those who trust them, even their own Makers in rare cases. Humans are not to be trusted, ever. Pam doesn't care if you don't trust her because the feeling is mutual.

I suppose Cassidy is in the same vein (ha) of vampires turning against those who trust them. Whether he's like that because he's a vampire or just an asshole, well, you can't really tell.

[iprotectyou]

Holy crap, you and the vampire puns! That's golden.

[irish_vagabond]

If you play with vampires long enough, you kind of get the fang of it.

oh god that was not even

[iprotectyou]

oh, hell, I'm laughing so hard I'm going to end up with a cramp

[irish_vagabond]

Careful, don't start coffin.

I WILL STOP NOW

[iprotectyou]

ahahaha stoooop

I have the worst headache

[genarti]

Enjolras believes the best of everyone until proven otherwise, but that's a different thing than trusting them. Trusting someone requires a) solid vouching from a trusted friend, or b) them proving themselves in a serious situation, preferably on multiple occasions.

...The lack of options for B in Milliways limit his trust of anyone he didn't come in as sworn dear friends with. There are several people about whom he thinks they might well be solid staunch trustworthy people; it's just hard to know for sure, from just chatting in a bar.

Anyway, that baseline wariness means it's not that hard to get him to distrust you. It doesn't necessarily mean dislike -- the two can overlap, but they're very different things. But a lot of Enjolras's secrets aren't just his own. He doesn't worry much about harm to himself, but he's very aware always of the information he holds and the friend networks who trust his judgment, even here where Javert is the only real threat to a lot of the things he cares most about.

Thor, on the other hands, starts with a similar (if louder) belief in the best of people, but, uh, it's a lot harder to get him to seriously distrust you. It can happen! If your name is Loki it takes significantly more work than a few attempts at fratricide, but for everyone else it's easier! But Thor starts with a baseline level of :D YOU SEEM A STALWART PERSON, HELLO NEW FRIEND.

That said, except for the special case of Loki (or other family members), I'm mostly talking about an easy interpersonal level of trust, and a good bit of this relies upon the fact that Thor has no fears of physical harm, and is pretty emotionally dentproof too. Trusting someone else with secrets of Asgard, or trusted access to it, or with another person's secrets, would be another matter.

Cosette would like to trust everyone! It's not nice to be suspicious! But she's rather more guarded than she really quite notices, too. Some of this is her upbringing with Valjean, and some of it is her mostly-forgotten early childhood, and a lot of it is just the reality of being a young bourgeois woman in her society; she has to make sure she's irreproachable in her public conduct, or she'll pay the price for it, and a lot of that's ingrained.

...But there are definitely people she distrusts and doesn't really quite know why. Sometimes it's childhood-related; sometimes it's that she's trying to talk herself out of a gut feeling because they seem perfectly nice, but the gut feeling remains.

Kazul... is a kids' book character, and also is a large dragon who worries rather more about being annoyed or inconvenienced than about being hurt. It's not so much that she trusts easily, as that she makes up her mind quickly to take a chance on you or not, and figures if you turn out to be untrustworthy she can always eat you.

Doctor Dinosaur trusts no one. He would probably be a happier reptile of dubious taxonomic status if he knew how to do things like trust people and make friends, but then he would have so many fewer GENIUS SCIENCE PLANS OF GENIUS!, so y'know.

[merryeccentricities]

Joly mostly trusts most people! He wouldn't say he trusts most people completely, since life plotting to overthrow the government got him in the habit of being at least a little careful about at least a few things, but he's more willing to believe in the goodwill of others than not. The easiest--and really almost only-- way for others to lose that is to be gratuitously cruel to other people or creatures, especially any that Joly feels responsible to.

Bahorel isn't really an especially trusting sort, he just doesn't worry much about getting hurt personally, so it often ends up looking the same way, at least as regards personal affairs. On the matters that aren't just personal affairs, there's a definite limit for anyone who hasn't earned their way into the inner circle yet.
Probably the easiest way to start actually earning his trust is to verbally or physically fight with him--that's either Alongside or Against, either way, really--or commit the right sorts of Art. He's very unlikely to start trusting anyone who seems like they're prone to self-deceit or denial, though there have been one or two complicated exceptions.

Gringoire does worry about getting hurt, mostly physically, and he trusts most people as far as he can throw them. Gringoire could probably toss a pumpkin about a foot away. He's fairly twitchy. (There are things people can do to win him over-- pay him, give him food, know him a fairly long while without attempting to have him killed-- but he never really expects that to last.)

Steven trusts everyone! Completely! -- Except that one weird kid who steals his toys. Everyone else has total clearance though! Short of actually trying to kill people, it's hard to lose that--and even then, he's inclined to second chances, because maybe you just made a mistake, right?

[for_everyone]

Kanan is a little more complicated than 'trust' or 'distrust.' For a long time after he started living on his own, he kept his distance from everyone, but this had less to do with not trusting others than not wanting to see anyone else hurt due to their proximity to him. But when it came to the secret of his past especially – it's not just about trust so much as it is about habit. When the idea that you must keep some part of your identity becomes ingrained in you, and when you become really used to lying about it, acknowledging it even in situations that are probably safe can seem frightening. When you have to work on the assumption that anyone who finds out might turn on you, even people who have been perfectly kind to you up until then, it can just be really hard to break out of that mindset. So sometimes it's not just about Kanan not trusting others, so much as being so used to operating a certain way by now that breaking out of that will be very difficult, and take some adjustment for him.

(Also this mun is admittedly speaking from a place of RELATING WAY TOO PERSONALLY WITH THIS, and this character has involved the weirdest instance of character bleed I have ever experienced. Thanks Kanan!)


Hera often has her guard up, but she at least feels that it's only to the extent necessary to protect herself and others, and meet her obligations. She has a very 'hope for the best, prepare for the worst' attitude toward trust, often open to listening to and helping others, but also not letting her guard down (for instance, encouraging a meeting with a seeming Rebel-sympathizing senator, but then deducing he was a fraud before he revealed himself). She'll also often keep information close to the chest not because she doesn't trust others with it, but because she feels a great responsibility to those who share this information with her, and to making sure as little as possible ends up in Imperial hands. She doesn't always like this, and would really always prefer to be open than secretive. But she also needs to respect those who trust her with their lives, and sometimes that means letting them dictate the terms of their work, or at times falling on the side of an overabundance of caution.