tuesday de

[inlovewithwords]

Quick riff off of yesterday: How often does your character lie, and who do they lie to? Strangers only, or friends and family just as indiscriminately?

Comments

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato tries not to lie, and being honest and upfront with people is a point that, in theory, he's reluctant to budge on. He takes umbrage at the idea of lying to avoid reprisal or disapproval from other people, or for personal gain, and even if he could bring himself to do either, it'd never last.

In practice his moral barrier to lying is either incredibly convoluted (likely) or full of holes (also likely) -- he lies to conceal his feelings, to try to convince people he's fine, to defensively push people away, and he'd be reluctant to admit doing as much. Similarly, he has no problem with misleading people with his actions, whether that be for strategic purposes to force an enemy to make a move that's favourable to him, or just for the aforementioned pushing-people-away and concealing-his-feelings reasons. No small amount of Yamato's strategies involve using his understanding of his enemies against them, controlling what information they receive to effectively manipulate them into making an error that he can exploit, and that's not not lying.

He takes keeping his word very seriously, too, and whenever he ends up breaking his word -- which isn't often at all, for him -- the shame and guilt eats away at him, even if the promise was informal. It's a trait he shares with Jyou and one of the reasons they get along so well, except that Jyou will always obey the letter and the spirit of any promise he gives, whereas Yamato will fiercely and meticulously follow the letter of his promises, but seems less concerned with the spirit of them.

[cameoflage]

Wilson doesn't lie for kicks, out of habit, to spare people's feelings or to get out of minor trouble, but he's not above lying to people he doesn't like either to get something out of them or to get out of major trouble that he doesn't feel like he deserves. He's a lot less likely to treat his friends that way, and even with his enemies it's not his favoured way of dealing with problems. Family I'm not sure about because he doesn't have a great relationship with very many of his family members.

Aradia is often brutally honest and finds it more useful to tell people the truth in most cases, but has lied to her friends to advance her goals before and would do it again if it was absolutely necessary to preserve the timeline. (It probably won't be, though, because she's pretty much done all the necessary tricking-them-into-acting-against-their-own-interests already; preventing a frienemy from sabotaging themselves is not really the same thing.)

Bastion very rarely lies, but more because it doesn't occur to them to lie in social situations unless feeding someone misinformation was the entire point of speaking to them. (Which hasn't come up for them, but it could.) They don't want to be dishonest to their friends because that would be disadvantaging them for personal gain, but don't find dishonesty inherently unconscionable nor are they prohibited from lying by their programming.

Thurlow's my biggest liar; they like it better when they can be truthful without adverse effects because it's less of a hassle, rather than telling lies when it makes no difference and then having to keep track of what lies they told to whom (and also they find it refreshing when they can take the direct, blunt approach instead of using finesse), but they'll readily lie to strangers or acquaintances in almost any situation. In their world they spend quite a bit of time pretending to be someone else, whether in a full-on disguise or just pretending they're whoever their mark was expecting to see. Despite this, when they do give their word they take keeping that promise very seriously.