InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Are you my mummy?"

fuck 'em in the heart {kait} (wearestardust) wrote,
@ 2015-11-26 00:05:00

Entry tags:

!memes

stealing a meme from ... everyone, but mostly borntorun
Happy Thanksgiving! Stealing a meme, while I should be working on jaha's housing meme.

Pick one of my characters (present or past) and I'll tell you:

1. What initially prompted me to like the character enough to write about him/her.
2. One of his/her best traits.
3. One of his/her worst traits.
4. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character.
5. The story/thread/chapter/post/paragraph/tag/phrase where I feel that I truly captured the character.
6. My plans for the character in the near future/what I imagine they're doing now, if a past character

(Post a new comment)

	ghanima 2015-11-26 06:31 am UTC (link)
	SO MANY PRETTIES TO CHOSE FROM. Let's go with...... Mordin Carol Danvers (Reply to this) (Thread)

wearestardust
2015-11-26 07:26 am UTC (link)

I LOVE THIS MEME.

1. ffffff. Okay, so Mordin's really interesting to me because he's a good person who did something ~horrible~. (He modified a sterilization plague that the krogan were becoming immune to after hundreds of years, so he modified it and ~rejuvenated~ it; effectively 99% of pregnancies weren't viable and the population stayed controlled.) He thought he was making the right call at the time, he loved working on the project with his colleagues, he appreciates it all as brilliant science - but he has regrets for what it did, he can admit to making a mistake. So even while he's aware that he made a mistake and he gives his life fixing it, his feelings about it are still really complicated? So he's... idk, he's lighthearted and he's fun and he's sweet but he can flip a switch and be completely cold in the name of helping people, regardless of what that means.

2. Mordin's genuinely happy these days. He's friendly and curious and he wants to talk to people - he doesn't do enough of it, tbh. He also doesn't hold grudges - part of this is biological, in that salarians process everything faster? so his emotional processing is a lot quicker than it is for humans, and he gets over stuff easily. He forgives easily and he can patch things up as if nothing happened.

3. He can be kind of stubborn. He's aware that he's smart and I'm not going to say that he finds humans to be stupid - but he will say that salarian biology and culture make them more attuned to scientific and intellectual advancement. Humans are fascinating, really, and they have their own qualities that make them unique and necessary, but he doesn't really like being challenged and he doesn't often admit to being wrong. He will, but it takes a while.

4. I feel like he's easy to write while I'm writing him - I do have to be careful about the cadence of his speech - but I struggle more with finding plot for him because he is so content, which is why he ends up being quieter than I'd like. His voice is strong, but he's not one that I bring out to play as often as I should.

5. I can't link to it because it's f-locked, but there are some snippets from a thread I wrote for The Shift back when I first picked him up (with Jo's Shepard) -- they're attached to a comment below this because it broke the character limit to have it in this post. oops.

6. Fuuuuck fuck I had plans for him, Jo and I talked about them, and I forgot what they were. I THINK it had something to do with some kind of project that I wanted to ask you about but I have to get back to you on that. XD But he needs something to work on, something to be passionate about, something to stress him out. Ultimately I think he needs some kind of massive failure so he can try and fix it. ... I also want to get him in a place where he gets to execute some shitty people who threaten the hospital, show off Mordin's darker side a little bit, get into an argument about the morality of killing people because they're bad people vs. letting them live because you're a good person, etc.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

wearestardust
2015-11-26 07:26 am UTC (link)

"You still like it here, or are you getting homesick?"

[...] “Homesick?” he glanced up from his lab work (currently he was examining a sample of Steve Rogers’s blood). He sniffed, eyes closing in thought for a moment. “Yes and no. Miss familiar things. Miss the food, but…” He shook his head. “My work there is done. Time to start over. More work I can do. More good. More things to learn.”

"Eve wants to name the first kid 'Mordin'. I didn't make it to the end to see if she did it, but I have a feeling it worked out." [...]

“Hah.” Mordin let out a brief, sharp laugh, but he couldn’t help looking a little bit proud. He didn’t think he’d live to see the day when a krogan would name his child after a salarian -- and technically, he hadn’t, but he was pleased to facilitate it.

He nodded to himself and went back to his work. “Time was right,” he said.

--

“Major Alenko, back in your ranks. Met him on Horizon. Heard he joined your crew again after Reapers attacked Earth.” He sniffed, displeased: “Injured. Badly. Glad to see he’s doing well.”

"Well enough," Shepard stressed. "The migraines are killing him and there's no good substitute here for his medication. I hate that there's nothing I can do about it."

Mordin didn’t know Kaidan well, but he’d since met and examined him. “Not much to do. Keep him on pain management, but resources too limited. Condition is … good, moderate, for an L2 biotic, but that doesn’t help. Pain is real, not theoretical. Doesn’t get better if you remind him others have it worse.” He shook his head. “Recommend the usual: dark room, no sound. Quiet.” A little pause, and then: “Avoid self-medicating. Alcohol. May be medicinal plants but nothing as effective. Will look into it. Will see if anything can help. And you.” He reached out, jabbing Shepard in the chest with a slender finger. “What about you.”

Shepard sat up a little straighter, surprised that the conversation was swinging away from Kaidan and onto him. Come to think of it, he didn't talk about himself much, did he? He was always prying into someone else's business instead. "What about me?"

Mordin peered at Shepard curiously, and he was a little gentler when he said, “Your state. Physical. Mental. Hoping Chakwas has been taking care of you. Hope your walls aren’t up too high.”

"My walls are fine, Mordin," he insisted, with just enough firmness to be authoritative. "I was ready to take the last push back home. We took out Cerberus. We know what we're doing. We win in the end. I have everything I want. I really am fine."

Mordin inhaled, taking in a deep breath and letting it out, and that was all the time he needed to ponder this and decide it was accurate enough. “Good,” he said. “Wheel of life goes on.” He knew from Kaidan that Shepard didn’t survive the war --- or he moved on to another state of being. Clever. The Illusive Man had been right, but he was the wrong person. Shepard was the one.

“We’re in similar places, you and me. More or less. Life’s work over. Life continues, what to do now.”

(Reply to this) (Parent)

wearestardust
2015-11-26 08:15 am UTC (link)

1. Uh. I think I was reading Ms. Marvel several months before Captain Marvel came out, and I was really interested in her arc of trying to be the "best of the best" - and then eventually settling on "being the best version of herself" instead. She's been treated really badly in the comics but I think her arcs over the last few years have been really different from a lot of comic book ladies and... idk, I really like her "punch it 'til it's not evil" approach because not a lot of lady characters are brash in the way that Carol is.

2. IDK if it's necessarily her best trait, but I think she stands out because she loves being a superhero - and she's kind of an adrenaline junkie and a glory hound, and she likes being a superhero to be a superhero, not just to do the right thing and save the day.

3. Ugh god she can be kind of an ass? Like, she's brash and aggressive and stubborn, and she doesn't think ahead really well, and she likes to strongarm other people so she can take charge. She's not really a strategist, and that applies to her personal relationships, too.

4. She's easy when I'm focusing on her - I go in cycles with her because she can take a lot of energy. Sometimes I struggle with her because she's a lot more abrasive and more of a go-getter than I am, so she takes charge in ways that I wouldn't think to - and I have to find the balance between her being tough but also being, like, likable and not just ~all tough all the time.~ I'm best with her when I remember she's also a huge dork.

5. Going to pop it down in a reply to this, once I find it!

6. Carol just got plot doing the long-distance recon, so I'm going to milk that job for all it's worth :D Maybe get her into trouble, maybe just let that be the boost she needs to keep her goin' ... I need to focus more on her friendships, too, esp her ladyfriendships :}

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	wearestardust 2015-11-26 08:19 am UTC (link)
	OK so I didn't need the other comment: here. The post is Carol doing her job, the conversation is Carol being a dork. Works for me for now. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	borntorun 2015-11-26 06:32 am UTC (link)
	SERA (Reply to this) (Thread)

wearestardust
2015-11-26 08:54 am UTC (link)

WHA! quelle surprise!

1. OKAY SO I have to confess that I have a type (Jo knows this). If you can give me a scrappy orphan/thief/rogue, I am down. I am so down. So, before Inquisition came out, Jo was like "So, there's this elf named Sera who's a bow-wielding rogue who's like 'fuck nobility' and she's a cute little lesbian with short blonde hair" and I was like "I am living for this." XD And I guess in playing with her and romancing her as my Inquisitor I was really struck by like ... how much she hit my character type and how much I identified with her - like, I hadn't seen a lesbian character like her in media and how she was sexual without being sexualized, and funny and weird and kind of obnoxious on the surface, but if you get down deeper into her character you start seeing the scars of systemic racism/classism and her story's a lot more complicated than she'll let you believe - and she's smarter than you think, and just ... I have a lot of feelings about her. A lot. The fact that half the fandom hates her for totally unjustified/stupid/incorrect reasons just fuels my love and makes me protective.

2. Sera can't stand for mistreatment of people, or for humiliating people - bad people should get what they deserve, but "bad people" are bigwigs who punch down and hurt people who have no power. But she isn't really interested in doing anything about it? And I don't know if that's a good or a bad trait - she wants to help in little ways, wants her network of people to help in little ways, by playing pranks or causing trouble or sabotaging things, but she doesn't want to gain power and rule and change things on a grand scale, because that's the opposite of what she stands for.

3. She's really, really dismissive of things that scare or challenge her. Anything she doesn't like is 'stupid', anything that bothers her is 'stupid', and she won't let up about it. She doesn't want to hear your feelings on it. She gets angry easily and because of her attitude she can come off as petulant and childish.

4. Sera's easy to write when I have her, but I don't toss her into stuff as often as I should because I'm struggling with direction for her. She's had her main conflict with Asala and that's cleared up a lot, so she's kind of ... trying to find a good place in the game where she fits that goes beyond pranking people and being irritating. She's perfectly happy with that (which is part of the problem) but I'm not happy with it. XD

5. Here! It's not even part of the public game, but I keep this little journal off to the side and haven't mentioned it to anyone. In the game, Sera keeps a journal that she updates throughout the game and you can read it when you go visit her - and it has all kinds of musings about what's going on and little drawings and all kinds of stuff. So Sera has this here. :D I update it every so often.

6. UGGH I DON'T EVEN KNOW. Sera's a hard one because she's hard for other characters to know past the surface - she's kind of cagey about it and she doesn't let people in very easily. She's friendly and she's around, but only really trusted people get into the meat of her story, so she's kind of just a little pixie sprite bothering people right now -- which is totally IC for her, I just want something more. She needs a personal ~arc~ and I'm still working out on what that is. (Anyone want to get to know her better? XD)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	borntorun 2015-11-26 04:13 pm UTC (link)
	KILI DOES (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	wearestardust 2015-11-26 05:16 pm UTC (link)
	KILI!!!! yes, I loved their friendship in Doorway, they were buddies. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	borntorun 2015-11-26 05:39 pm UTC (link)
	ME TOO. they were so stupid and goofy and dorky (Reply to this) (Parent)

	hangthestars 2015-11-26 06:56 am UTC (link)
	matt murdock motherfucker (Reply to this) (Thread)

wearestardust
2015-11-26 09:14 am UTC (link)

1. THIS GOES WAY BACK XD But I think ... idk, Daredevil was kind of my intro into regularly reading comics and has always been my baby. I love his powers, I love that he lives with disability and kicks ass, I love that he's damaged and flawed. I don't really remember my exact reasons for starting to play him other than "I like that blind lawyer guy"

2. IRON WILL. Matt's all about perseverance, about pushing through pain (physical and mental/emotional) to continue through the day and do what he has to. It actually kind of borders on insane, and harmful, but he's strong, and he doesn't give up. (I also love the fact that when he's caught in a lie he completely overcompensates to the point of it becoming a slapstick comedy.)

3. UGH he does this thing that we've talked about, where if someone he loves does something wrong, he won't blame them. If he loves someone, they are saints, and they will never do anything wrong, even if they do something wrong. He absolves them of agency and responsibility, and he either blames enemies/outside forces or himself. The people he loves can't be shitty people.

4. Matt's not hard for me to write, at all, but that's why I have to be careful - because I can get lazy with him and can stop making him specific.

5. Here. We have so much Matt stuff over the last 8 or 9 years that I don't even know.

6. Matt's dealing with his depression right now, and the trial is coming up soon - so he's working on that. I want Matt to have the opportunity to fight WITHOUT getting his ass kicked, because he's gotten beat up the last few fights he was in. Um. IDK. Part of me wants him to have the kind of nervous break he has in canon at some point but I think it'd be cumbersome more than anything else.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	kimity 2015-11-27 12:10 pm UTC (link)
	DONNA (Reply to this) (Thread)

wearestardust
2015-11-28 04:22 pm UTC (link)

1. Donna's always been my favorite companion - I think it's because she's a little older, her relationship with Ten is purely platonic, and she's funny while still having a lot of warmth and heart. Her compassion gets me - she seems like she's stupid and shallow and useless, but she's bull-headed and brilliant underneath. There's this running theme of Donna overcoming her inferiority complex, but it's more complicated than just "oops, now I'm confident and awesome!" - she really does think she's nothing, sometimes, but she fucking hates it if you talk crap about her and don't show her respect. And I think that's a great character trait. Also, I'm pretty sure I picked up Donna specifically to play with your Ten, so ♥

2. HRMM. Donna's best trait is probably her compassion for other people. She can come off as obnoxious and loud and pushy, and she has a trait of sleeping through or otherwise missing major events, but she has a level of innate compassion that's just heartbreaking - and it's in direct contrast to her outward persona. It's not to say that other companions don't care, or that the Doctor doesn't care, but Donna's compassion wrecks her. I think there's something very empathic about her, if that makes sense.

3. Her worst trait is probably her inner critic. Like, she has a lot of annoying traits, but her worst trait is definitely the way she treats herself. She finds joy in traveling with the Doctor and she demands respect everywhere she goes, but she has no genuinely lofty ideas about herself and when push comes to shove, she really does think she's not worth any of this. A lot of that comes from living a small life for so long, and a lot of it comes from her mother. It's hard for her to shake. She can stand up and bark and demand that someone give her a salute or demand that someone pays as much attention to her as they do the Doctor, but it's mostly bluster. And that's fine, she doesn't have to be the paragon of self-confidence to demand respect.

4. Donna's actually hard for me to write sometimes. She's one of my favorites to write, but for some reason despite being very chatty she doesn't always pop into other people's conversations often. I don't know whether she's just not my go-to character for new interactions or what, but it's been like that since I started playing her. So sometimes, she can feel a little limited in her interactions or off in a corner somewhere, and it's my job to pull her out of it because wtf.

5. YOU'RE RIGHT THAT TEN/DONNA THREAD WE JUST DID IS IN FACT THE BEST.

6. Donna's dealing with the consequences of her Trouble and the blocks that the Doctor put up in her mind, and she misses Eddie deeply - so she's in a state of recovery right now. I don't know what my other future plans are for her yet except she wants to be there for when the Doctor goes through whatever he goes through. :D (...She wants to keep living with him, though. Except I think she might kill him in such close quarters)

(Reply to this) (Parent)