#essi and juno are also so fascinating in how paradoxical both of their characters are

[andro-dino]

thinking really hard about my ocs again. and their positive and negative traits and experiences. and what they represent. not just from a writing perspective but also personally. and sobbing really hard.

[andro-dino]

could you elaborate on Essi and Juno's characters and how they are paradoxical? I'm curious, I'm taking any Essi crumbs I can get :D

OKAY SO LIKE BASICALLY I was thinking about some of their more internal struggles and things that they deal with and it’s so like, self contradictory to everything else about them and their personalities and I just find it so fascinating.

With essi, all around her personality is very much in line with a lot of protagonist type characters: she’s very energetic and outgoing, super hardworking and determined, and has her moments of silliness but also being very very cool. The interesting thing is that while she is for the most part pretty confident and self assured, she’s also in a lot of ways insecure. She gets very easily nervous and intimidated by other people, even if she tries her best to hide that and interacts with them despite her nerves, and sure, when she does warm up to people, she’s able to be her outgoing self very quickly, but that initial nervousness as well as the fact that she herself often doesn’t really know just how charming and likable she can be is kinda the cue that there is something more underneath the surface. More than that, when you look at her as a blader, I imagine there’s also some struggle there, because the thing about it is that Essi is a very strong and hard working blader, but she’s still not as strong as some others, and that is a source for some turmoil. Especially when she’s best friends with someone like gingka, it lends itself to a lot of comparison that maybe might not be the best for herself. The other thing about that is that she’s also very isolated in a lot of her struggles, despite the fact that she does have a lot of friends and people supporting her, because she doesn’t wanna be a burden to anyone. A big part of Essi’s character is the she likes to feel useful and helpful and she does a lot to support others, but she really doesn’t extend that to herself a lot and tries to tough out a lot of things she deals with on her own, not even feeling like her problems are really that bad/worth the concern. She’s so contradictory because of all of those contrasting features— she’s confident but she’s also insecure, she’s got lots of great friends but she’s also lonely, even just the fact that she is both strong and weak. Essi is a lot of different things but I love that about her and I feel like it works really well for her.

Juno, among my main four, I feel like is arguably the one who generally goes thru the least turmoil as a whole. She’s got herself pretty figured out. Since I kinda tend to depict her mostly in sillier/fluffier situations, I don’t really talk about some of the deeper parts of their personality a lot, but it’s kinda an important thing when I think about them plot-wise. As with most of my ocs, I don’t really have a concrete storyline for him so much as I do a general arc and progression of his character. The way I kinda imagine it, a lot of his early role would be kinda similar to the way takanosuke interacts with the main gang, in the sense that he’s not an antagonist and actually does tend to get along with the characters most of the time, but their appearances are sporadic and they don’t really tend to hang around a lot. It lends itself to them feeling more cryptic and mysterious, which is kinda the vibe I was aiming for there. A main idea with them though is that their first battle with any of the main characters which does eventually become a longstanding rivalry is with Kite, and I know I talk abt this a lot in a digivalen sense, but beyond that, it’s also what’s initially revealing about their character and that there’s more to her than what initially meets the eye. The idea with it is that juno talks a big talk about getting to know people more deeply through beybattles and revealing more about her rivals and their personalities through the act of communication via bey battle, and for most people, this ends up being a fairly enjoyable experience, but when kite battles her, he realizes one crucially important thing: Juno’s holding back. Kite ends up winning that battle, but it’s not a win he’s satisfied with because he knows Juno wasn’t giving it his actual best effort, and when he calls her out on this, Juno doesn’t let anything slip, still just as cryptic as ever, but does acknowledge him. I actually wrote a short drabble about this a while ago because the idea is so important to Juno’s character.

This kind of thing continues with her for a while, and the thing about it is that while yes, being a blader but not battling people all out is generally risky and weird behavior, but when Juno holds back, it’s not just that they’re not giving it their all, but also that they don’t extend their own philosophy to themself. Juno’s main passion and motivation generally is to understand other people better, to get them to open up and help them understand themselves better as well, and while she is very in tune with her emotions and tends to be a very friendly and empathetic character, he notably doesn’t tend to open up much to others himself. There’s a level of emotional distance that makes them feel unknowable to a lot of people, but that kinda starts breaking down once Kite (and eventually others) start acknowledging that and confronting that. For a while, Juno is content to just getting to know others without opening up herself in the same way, but that becomes very shaky once he’s called out on it, and part of what I think their character arc within the story would be would involve him doing more for himself, which also includes going all out in beybattles more often, not being content to just sit by but actually be a part of it himself. Juno’s real power as a blader isn’t really known for a while because they don’t fully apply themself, but the fact that he can hold his own for so long against strong opponents even without giving it his all is a testament to the fact that she is much stronger than she lets on. She’s so weird and cryptic and hypocritical, I love her sm.