Thursday DE

[needsmoreresearch]

What are your character's thoughts on privacy? Are they a private person, or are they a let-it-all-hang-out font of TMI? Do they try to be private but they're just bad at keeping secrets?

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen grew up in an extremely confined space where no one could ever enter or leave and where there were security cameras in all the public areas. Privacy was available in family quarters (single adults had barracks space most of the time) and in the bathrooms, at most. Vault manners evolved to give people something of an illusion of time and space in which other people were not ever-present. You didn't ask personal questions or intrude on people who didn't want to talk about certain things, because that was basically saying that other people were free to do the same to you, and that would be the end of whatever semblance of privacy you had.

[just_cant_lose]

Jim is a strange mix of 'says nothing at all about himself' and 'will tell anything'. It comes from a place of having spent the majority of his life with no one to tell anything to - and also knowing no one is worth sharing anything with - mixed with the sure and certain knowledge that it doesn't matter a single iota what anyone knows about him, or anything else.

Also, he lies like breathing. So even when he's telling the truth people might not believe it, and vice versa. Basically, he'll give TMI if it might illicit an entertaining reaction - this happened recently with Wilford - and in the next breath refuse to confirm that his name is Jim. He'll never hand over information that can be used against him, but everything else is just there to be shared, or not, on his whim.

It's actually weird for him to simply hold conversations with the same people as often as he does in-bar. Most people in his life - clients/whatever - he'll interact with once or twice in his life. To consistently talk to people in-bar means they're able to build more of a picture of him over time, and that can feel a bit weird to him sometimes so he doesn't give many details that'll fill in the blanks. Hell, even Sherlock knows next to nothing about his past.

[inlovewithwords]

Eriond: Both very private and having little personally to be private about. It's a little complicated.

Lois: She likes to think she's a all-out-there type. She's not.

Evelyn: Pretty private, mostly growing out of hiding things from Templars. She eventually will be a public figure, but still really values her privacy.

R2: He cares more about other people's privacy than his, if that makes sense.

Anakin: Thinks he's extremely private. Frankly, he has the worst poker face in the history of ever.

Tavi: is literally the single most public figure in Alera, and a lot of his life is fairly exposed... but he also seriously values his privacy and is an expert at keeping secrets. So, uh, he's actually extremely private and picks very specifically what other people get to see, I guess, which is a hell of a lot. But in general the last few generations of his family have been very good at keeping a lot of their personal lives behind closed doors. It should be noted that Tavi and Kitai never hid their affair prior to marrying! They didn't see any real reason to. So yeah, he's got a really weird mix of tolerance for people being in his business All The Time and being highly effective at drawing the line where no one is allowed in.

[cute_bruiser]

So I wouldn't normally be That Person (...probably), but I'm having a bit of a shitawful week and need distracting.

If anyone would like their pups to try meeting an interdimensional vaguely goddess-like superhero who only speaks in other people's words, Mrs Who from A Wrinkle In Time (movie, not book) is in PFSB here.

[quick_clean_pure]

He doesn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter, living on the streets, so he just embraces it. This includes canonically having wild sex in open alleyways.

[death_gone_mad]

Amascut has infamy as the Deceiver on her world, so yes. She lies, she walks among mortals and hides her true nature (and likely, her intentions). She is private and keeps her life compartmentalized, but can act public if she needs to do so. The days when she was openly worshipped as a goddess are long gone through, and I think part of it might be because she can't stand being that big of a public figure anymore. That might also be why there are hardly any surviving statuary or temples to her.

A big part of it was the attempt to erase her from the religious traditions of the Kharid, of course.

Fairy Fixit is much much less private. She is capable of hiding the truth. She doesn't outright lie but there's no reason why she wouldn't. Or would, for that matter.

[iprotectyou]

Baze is TMI about some things, and intensely private about others.

Autor, on the other hand, is a ridiculously private person. He doesn't even give his name out in conversation.

[deadeye_shot]

Hawkeye is always on guard, ferociously protecting her and her commander's secrets. She even had Mustang burn the research notes for Flame Alchemy off her back, where her father had tattooed them. That secret will die with Roy.

[exiled_heir_of_the_eighth]

Sahaal's fairly good at keeping secrets, but he doesn't really have that much to hide. So, he's pretty much an open book.

Apart from the occasional lie by omission, but hey.

[troublesome_alchemist]

Mustang makes very sure everyone knows he is absolutely horrible at keeping secrets. I mean, everyone knows he's a serial womanizer and slacks off at every opportunity, right?

>.>

Riiiiiiight.

[archmagetrust]

Khadgar believes that knowledge is power and, for the most part, that knowledge should be shared. Mages keeping secrets led to Dalaran being a touch cutthroat and petty in individual research and made it extremely difficult for mages to be willing to work together. This led to multiple secret organizations and power structures within the city, one of which became obsolete with Medivh's death, and the others falling with Dalaran's destruction during the Third War. (Khadgar missed this, being trapped on Outland.)

Upon being rebuilt, the mages of Dalaran agreed that they could accomplish far more by working together rather than trying to snipe each other's research. Thus Dalaran was returned to new heights, literally. Working together, the mages perfected a spell to levitate and teleport the city, keeping it safe from further attack and positioning themselves where their magics were needed most.

Khadgar was delighted to find the city thus changed, though he's still getting used to the cold northern conditions it now floats in. No more Tirisgarde, no more Council of Tirisfal, and his acceptance of a position on the Council of Six put the nail in the coffin of Dalaran being led by hidden figures. Khadgar won't stand for it. The Six being unknown was meant to protect them but in the end it just made them unaccountable and one had only to look at Kel'Thuzad to see the folly of that.

On a more personal level, everyone already knows Khadgar's story and what happened during the First War. So he's private in that he never discusses it because he's never had to. He's literally in the history books. The few times the topic has been skirted in bar have been interesting to write because I've gotten the feeling that he's never properly dealt with what went down.

[sticktothemission]

Gabriel says nothing he thinks you shouldn't know, misdirects as needed, has no qualms about lying, and will do it all with a smile.

Reaper doesn't smile.

[i_am_your_host]

Emcee is a lot like Jim in this regard! He shares, or he doesn't. He'll also give TMI if it'll get an entertaining reaction. How much he says about himself, or how straight or in-depth an answer you'll get, really depends on who he's talking to.

God luck getting anything out of Pam. She's a vampire and spent many decades living in secrecy to survive. Early on when I was playing her, I tended to let her be a little loose-lipped about some things only because it was hard to maintain threads and y'know, conversations. Lately though I've played her as a tougher nut to crack. You just have to get on her good side.

Cassidy also has the secret vampire thing going for him. Being a con man as well, he's also very evasive, lies a lot, and downplays issues about himself. On the other hand, if he gets to know you and trust you, he's apt to open up about certain personal things.

[mightbeagoodone]

Steve Rogers is an open book. There's very little that he thinks or feels that you can't read on his face. He's better at keeping other people's secrets.

Sherlock is also one of those who alternates between TMI and giving away nothing, depending on how entertaining he finds it. He reads everybody else in a glance, so he has a ... unique view of secrets.

[genarti]

Enjolras is complicated, because he's a private person in a lot of ways, but he's also extremely emotionally open in other ways. (And he's very, very good at keeping secrets, but those are mostly things that affect other people too.) So he's reserved, but he doesn't actually hide his emotional reactions, and he's not embarrassed by them (or by, like, anything else.) And he doesn't tend to volunteer things about himself, but if you ask, he'll answer straightforwardly. He may be confused why you care when we could be talking about politics, but he'll answer anyway.

Thor is another complicated case, because he's lived all his life as a public figure, and he's an extremely extroverted people person. So he's very open! Upfront and honest and cheerful! Let it all hang out! Except all the things that are completely not hanging out, because this is a genuine but also extremely curated version of himself! Close friends get to see more, but there's plenty that he'll just never mention to most people. He's also perfectly willing to directly say "I don't want to discuss that, let's talk about something else."

Cosette is a fairly private person, I think. Everything in her upbringing post-toddlerhood led her towards that -- the Thénardiers sure didn't care about her inner life, the nuns were not exactly let-it-all-hang-out sorts, and Valjean is about as private as it's humanly possible to get, plus decorum is a general expectation of her gender and social class -- and she doesn't seem to rebel against it.

Kazul is private, but not fanatically so. It's more that she sees no interest in sharing except with friends, and people need to prove themselves interesting enough and sensible enough (by her lights) to become friends.

...And then, as so often, there's Doctor Dinosaur. Uh. I'm not sure if he counts as let-it-all-hang-out or as "tries to keep secrets, thinks he has done so, is completely incorrect in this and most other assessments." More the latter, probably. But his inner life is full of crystals and explosions anyway; any feelings beyond the general disgust-and-smugness palette are a secret from himself for sure.

[configuration_birdwatcher]

Bastion didn't really have conversational discretion drilled into them in the omnic army, because the odds of a combat omnic without a fully functional vocal processor having a friendly conversation with a human weren't terribly high and even omnics working for the humans weren't likely to get close without being assimilated. So Bastion's not in the habit of keeping everything secret by default unless they decide otherwise, at least. They also make absolutely no attempt to hide their origins as a killer robot, because they're used to everyone already knowing about that in their own world. And just in general they prefer to be honest and direct, so they'll usually answer questions in an amicable conversation. They're capable of lying but don't usually make the effort.

They do have things they don't want to talk about, such as the fate of most of the other wartime Bastion units or the rocky and haphazard process of learning to overcome their combat protocols, and they'll also be less forthcoming and more terse with people they don't like. So far it hasn't come up, but they have no qualms about answering prying questions with "none of your business" or similar if they feel like the person they're talking to neither deserves an answer nor has a good justification to ask.

Also their emotional reactions are loudly broadcast through their body language (and their tendency to make noises equivalent to laughing, grumbling, whimpering, and so forth). The only reason they have any kind of poker face is because they have no articulated facial features whatsoever, not even a narrowable eyelight.