#i <3 making educated guesses about someone's morals and objectives based on what kinds of things they do

[halo-eater]

one thing about me is that i will Consider the Implications and you can't stop me

[rockshortage]

*Cracks knuckles* Ow. Let's see, how about: A6, 16. B1, 12. C1, 2, 3, 5, 8. D4. E2, 3, 7. F2, 5, 10, 12 (Sorry, but also not sorry) I6. L1, 2, 4, and 9 :)

hoo boy that took a while

A6) Does your OC tend to assume their interpretation of events and reality is correct, or do they question it? I.e., “I’m sure that’s what you said” versus “It’s possible I misheard you.”

Ah, he questions himself a lot. Maybe he wasn’t listening well enough because he was too distracted by being anxious? Maybe he misinterpreted this event, because his background knowledge on it was lacking, he doesn’t know the full story and opinions from all sides, he’s not sure he can form a well educated opinion on this--

A16) Does your OC have to go through their own trials to learn a lesson, or do they listen and learn from observation and lecture? I.e., does your OC listen when someone tries to tell them the importance of budgeting, or do they have to go experience what happens if you don’t budget first?

Hector needs to do it himself for Science, because how else is he to truly know, if not from his own personal experience? Trusting what people tell you is good and all but gathering data yourself is better.

Unless we’re talking about raider politics, in which case there’s not really a good way for Hector to gather data without seriously endangering him and friends, so he’ll just listen to Gage.

B1) Do they believe you have to give respect to get it, or get respect to give it?

Generally, he believes it’s necessary to give people respect before you can expect it in return. He learns that many people do not in fact think the same way. He’ll still want to extend basic courtesy to them even if they’re assholes, unless they disrespect/piss him off to the extremes, or if their actions threaten his position and in turn the well-being of himself and friends.

B12) Your OC orders something to eat and gets their order done in a pretty wrong way, something they can’t just pick off or whatnot to correct, or something major is missing. What do they do?

Have a back and forth about it in his head – ah it’s not so bad it’s still fine, but then again he really wanted it differently… but he doesn’t wanna bother them and be entitled about it, but man… :( Might get close to pointing it out but chances are slim that he’ll actually get someone to correct the order. It’ll be disappointing but he’ll eat it.  

C1) Does your OC have a moral code? If not, how do they base their actions? If so, where does it come from, and how seriously do they take it?

Eeeh, not a super strong one. His baseline are general societal morals and norms, like… help person good, kill person bad. Most of the time he’ll base his actions on what feels right for him and for his friends. He’ll consider: will doing this make me feel bad afterwards? Will it have a negative impact on other people, who don’t deserve it? Is that consequence worth it because it saves my own skin or helps/protects my friends?

C2) Would your OC feel bad if they acted against their morals? If not, would they find a way to excuse themselves for it?

Bringing back the point about sacrificing for the greater good. He’d consider that the morally right thing to do because it impacts fewer people negatively. But making that sacrifice endangers his friends, whose lives for him personally are worth much more than an abstract crowd of people. So he chooses to not do the thing for the greater good and save his friends instead, and yes, he would feel very bad on the one hand, because oh boy. As far as most people are concerned, he did a horrible terrible thing and was extremely selfish and absolutely chose wrong. But on the plus side, and that’s a very big huge plus- he still has his friends. And still having his friends makes him feel less bad than how he would have felt if he didn’t have his friends anymore.

So uh… yes and no.

C3) Is it important for them to be with people (socially, intimately, whatever) whose major ideological tenets align with their own?

More or less. He can’t hang out well with people he completely disagrees with in every way, of course that’s not going to work. But Hector is… how to say… kinda boring when it comes to ideals and opinions and all that stuff. He just doesn’t have very strong ones in general. Which can make him a little bland and potentially spineless, but also pretty agreeable. As long as they don’t constantly shove their great big opinions in his face, they’ll get along well enough.

C5) Do your OC’s morals and rules of common decency go out the window when it comes to those they don’t like, or when it’s inconvenient? Aka, are their morals situational?

I think I kind of answered this in C2. Basic morals do get thrown out the window if friends are threatened, or if he gets pissed off enough. He’d have to be really pissed off though. As well as being post having-grown-a-spine(-at-least-partially). Hurting people bad but being insufferable to Hector also bad so guess what fucker

C8) Is your OC more practical or ideal morally? I.e., do they hold people to high expectations of behavior even if it’s not realistic for the situation, or do they have a more realistic approach and adapt their morality to be more practical?

Again a little tricky because I’m having trouble coming up with a scenario that would help me make up my mind with a definite answer. I’m leaning more towards a practical approach 1) because Hector is more of a realist/pessimist in general, 2) he doesn’t want to like… be overly demanding

D4) Would they like to be immortal? Why, why not? If they are immortal, would they rather not be?

The more he thinks about it the more meaningless life seems to get for someone like him. Solution: don’t think about it! Repress that shit because it’s not like you can do anything about it anyway. Also an involuntary solution but one that helps nonetheless: have shit memory so that you don’t feel like you’ve lived too many lifetimes.

If you were to ask him, the answer you get completely depends on the headspace he’s in at the moment. If he’s just vibing, going about his day and things are going well then yeah! Immortality isn’t so bad. If you catch him on an off day, things aren’t going so well, maybe he just thought about having to deal with losing his friends eventually… then you obviously get the opposite answer.

E2) Which of the nine types of intelligence is your OC strongest in? Weakest? (Linguistic, existential, naturalist, et cetera)

I know I talked about this before and I grouped them from strong to medium to weak but I can’t for the life of me find the post anymore (thanks tumblr for your useless garbage search and tagging features). So I can’t even check if I’m still on the same wavelength with past me :v

From strongest to weakest we have…

Logical-mathematical

Spatial

Linguistic

Bodily-kinesthetic

Musical

Naturalist

Interpersonal

Existential

Intrapersonal

E3) How many languages do they speak?

Three… and a half.

The half language being Swiss German, because I don’t know what the fuck it is even after graduating from language uni

The others: Standard German, English, and French, from strongest to weakest.

E7) Are they a good note-taker? Are they a good test-taker? Do exams make them nervous?

Yes, yes, and yes. He’s very good at taking notes considering most of science is documentation. And even now when he’s not doing a lot of Formal Science things, he still writes in his journal almost daily, summing up events and making notes of important things. He gets nervous with tests with all the self doubt if he really prepared well enough and the unpredictability of the questions that will be asked, but once the pen is in his hand, he just blazes through it.

F2) What’s their ideal home look like? Where is it?

Someplace underground, safe and sturdy like a vault. Industrial aesthetic is welcome and he wants to have plenty of space, but it shouldn’t feel huge and empty. Needs to be homey, even if it might feel a little rustic to the average person. Having it built into a mountain would be sick, so he still has the perfect protection from the sun, but he doesn’t have to crawl out of a hole in the ground like some kind of worm – instead he opens the door and gets the most amazing view immediately.

… and I promise, only after writing the above did I remember that he pretty much lives in a mountain already, just a plastic one. Close enough.

F5) How handy are they? Can they fix appliances, cars, cabinets, et cetera?

Quite handy indeed. He can fix most things, he usually just needs some time to (re-)familiarize himself with the object and its functions. A lot of it also involves trial and error, but he’ll figure it out eventually.

F10) Do they engage in any of the arts? How good do you intend them to be? Would they agree they are?

He’d actually be really good at pen/pencil drawing, what with making technical illustrations and blueprints of Science Stuff, but it’s not a skill that’s applied in an artsy setting. When the goal is to draw for the sake of drawing, evoking emotion, or paint with a brush, that’s probably when shit would fall apart. I can’t remember who the artist was, but it reminds me of this little comic about Paladin Danse – in which he’s extremely good at technical drawings but then he attempts to draw a dog and it just looks…wrong.

Now with music, he’s more likely to engage in it in an artful way. He likes to sing, even if he very rarely does it now that he has people around him more often than not. Before, he’d just be alone in his lonely place and sing and scream to his heart’s content, but now he’s too awkward to do it, because someone might hear him. He is pretty good at it though, considering how much alone time he’s had to practice.

F12) Would they enjoy a theme park?

The rides and junk food? Yes absolutely. But the giant crowd and every little consequence it entails, nope, no thank you, he’ll just leave it be.

You bet he’s gonna go on the rides at nuka world though once they got them back up and working, because the crowd isn’t as big as pre-war and he’s the fucking overboss and can skip lines and restrict access to others however he damn pleases.

I6) Could they eat the same thing they enjoy over and over and not get bored of it quickly?

He can, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys it. The first month or so at nuka world he almost exclusively lives off of some shitty nutrient bars. In some scenarios, food just exists as sustenance and not as something to be enjoyed.

In a preferable scenario though, it is to be enjoyed. And I think while he would get bored of it after a while, it’d take longer than for the average person. And even then, he’s just happy he can eat something enjoyable at whatever pace he likes instead of having to scarf down Compressed Nutrient

L1) How have your characters changed since you created them?

He stopped existing in a void, which is a pretty damn big change. Now he has a whole world and other characters to interact with, that contribute to shaping and developing his personality.

L2) What do you consider the biggest themes in your character, if any?

Oof, this is hard. Maybe… getting to know yourself? Accepting change, personal growth?

L4) Would you hang out with your OC if you could?

I’m actually not sure sjdfsdnsv

Like yes he is sweet bean who must be protected, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is a weird little old man. I guess if we can just chill listening to music and he can go off about crustaceans or something and we speak The Horrible Language, why the fuck not

L9) How did you come up with your OC?

Masks cool. Me especially like gas masks. Unhinged science characters also cool. Make generic but still sliiiightly unique design and make it a point to not have him be a young pretty boy character despite having immortality. Add lots of weaknesses to compensate for the immortality. Add science personality things and complete the picture with projections of my own personality. Boom, you’ve got yourself the beginnings of a Hector

[wandworkshop]

I am not sure if you can see my request from yesterday since I was not a user at that time. I decided to ask it again. Would you mind interpreting my wand？Apple wood with phoenix feather，11 and 3/4 inches，supple flexibility. And I am a Slytherin.

Hi there! I did get the original request, but don’t worry about asking again.

A little side note regarding your initial message: I’m always kind of guessing personalities with these little interpretations I make. These are, however, very stereotypical assumptions based on the ‘ideal owner’ I think the wand would choose. But nobody will ever be 100% the stereotypical owner of a certain wand, so I might be very wrong about your personality, and I’m also positive that there’s much more to you than I’ll guess based on your wand. :)

Wood: Apple

I like apple wood because it usually makes for pleasantly well-rounded wands. Someone with an apple wand is often somewhat of a social butterfly: charming, positive, and respected in their peer group. There is always a moral aspect to an apple wood owner - they might show a strong interest in social justice and generally the ‘greater good’. Apple itself strongly despises the Dark Arts and will probably refuse to perform certain magic if there is a malicious intent behind it. There’s a general positivity linked with apple wood. The magic it produces is energetic and dynamic, well suited for someone with an active lifestyle and a somewhat optimistic view on the world. Apple wood is difficult to process, but once a wand is crafted for it, it’s remarkably resilient and long-lasting. This detail might also be true for the apple wood owner. When choosing its owner an apple wand might also seek out a person with a talent for language, be it the gift of the gab, or a knack for foreignt languages.

Core: Phoenix feather

A phoenix core is always versatile and enables a broad range of use for the apple wood, which will only really object to dark magic and strong curses. However, phoenix is also the most reserved of the cores, reigning in the open-minded apple wood. I feel like the owner of an apple-phoenix wand is most likely to listen first, talk second. There’s a certain implication of listening to both sides in an argument before choosing one, and I imagine that the wielder of this wand might act as a mediator or diplomat in certain situations. Phoenix being the most ‘head-heavy’ of the cores, this is certainly a wand for someone who likes to be informed, who educates themselves on different issues, and who shows interest in the world and people around them, while also not naively trusting everyone, but rather gathering all the information before making a decision.

Length: 11 3/4 inches

With typical wand length ranging between 9 and 14 inches, this is a very average-length wand which indicates a nice balance between wood and core. I feel like it furthers the idea of being open-minded and interested in the world around while also making a point of forming your own, informed opinion.

Flexibility: supple

The flexibility of the wand often correlates with the flexibility of its owner, which I feel ties in well with what I wrote above. The owner of this wand is unlikely to be deadlocked in their belief, but rather shows a willingness to bend and evolve and adapt to new information they might gather. This is the very opposite of a stubborn, uncompromising wand, very well-suited for someone with an open mind and heart.

[moonlitgleek]

Thank god someone finally said it! Catelyn was a HORRIBLE wife, a worse mother, and an even worse person. The most tragic and overlooked aspect of Ned's story is that he got saddled with her. It made his life miserable, and brought ruin to his house and seven kingdoms as a whole. Getting his head cut off might even be a mercy compared to coming back home and living the rest of his life with THAT. Then again, if it weren't for her, his head wouldn't have been cut in the first place.

Sometimes I really hate this damn site.

You know, it’s people like you that cripple discussion of nuanced or complicated characters through the tendency to take every bit of criticism as a confirmation of your hate and an invitation to spew it all over everyone. I shouldn’t be wary of openly criticizing a character for fear that those who hate them would misconstrue my words and use it to fuel their nonsense arguments, which happens near every time I think to criticize someone, especially when it’s a female character. Even when I specifically say that that I don’t think this character a bad person like in this case. Did you miss the last paragraph of my post? Did you miss the entirety of @secretlyatargaryen‘s post? Because it has been reiterated that Cat is not a bad person or a bad mother. The point is not to bash Catelyn as you seem interested in doing but to point out that her actions with Jon are wrong and that they affected more than just Jon. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who calls a woman “that” as if she is some thing and who seems invested in blaming her for everything she does is only interested in using our criticism to disparage and vilify Cat.

By the way, your message is as factually inaccurate as it is disgusting, anon. Let’s break it down.

Fallacy #1: Ned was saddled with Catelyn.

In a society that cares not a whit about women’s consent or feelings, it’s almost amusing that you think that it’s the man who gets saddled with the woman. Between Ned and Catelyn, guess which one had any kind of power in the situation? Ned. Hoster Tully might have demanded that Ned honor the betrothal to Catelyn as a price for his support in the war but it was still Ned’s choice to accept or refuse. But the rebels needed the Riverlands if they wanted to win the war, you say. Sure, and Ned made a choice for strategic reasons, but he still had the space to make the choice. Do you think that Catelyn did? Do you think Hoster bothered to ask her if she minded marrying the brother of the guy that she has been betrothed to for years and grew up expecting to marry? Do you think he bothered to consider that it’s callous to marry his daughter off so soon after her betrothed died and to his own brother? And even if he did, a woman who was raised with Family, Duty, Honor so hammered into her psyche and who, like every other woman in Westeros, was raised on how her place was to marry someone of her father’s choosing stands no chance. The system is broken and Catelyn Tully is as much its victim as any other woman in Westeros.

Fallacy #2: Catelyn made Ned miserable and his death was a mercy compared to being with her.

What an egregious (and delusional) thing to say that Ned is better off dead than being with the woman he loves and the children he adores. What an awful thing to say that anything pertaining to Ned’s death is a mercy. The man’s death was a knife to the hearts of his wife and children, but you think it’s better for him than the company of the wife he literally spends a book yearning for. That’s messed up.

I don’t know what book you’ve read or what you’re basing your claims on, but in my copy, Ned Stark is a man who clearly loves and values his wife as a person. He builds a sept for her because he respects her and wants her to have the comfort of her gods. There is a great deal of affection and comfort that shines through their interactions, and clear evidence in Catelyn’s second chapter in AGoT that Ned seeks and enjoys her company. In my copy, I see a guy who shows tremendous political trust in his wife that he leaves Winterfell and the North in her hands when he leaves with the expectation that she would continue Robb’s education and who trusts her to start mobilizing the Northern banners. I see a guy who reacts in wonderment to seeing Catelyn in King’s Landing, and constantly reflects on how he wishes he is with her during his tenure as Hand. I see Catelyn occupying Ned’s thoughts in his imprisonment that one of his regrets is that he’ll never see her again. If that’s being miserable, sign me up. For more of Ned’s so-called misery in his marriage, please refer to this post.

But Jon Snow, right? Yes, but Jon Snow. Jon’s presence has always been a point of conflict between Ned and Cat but that does not change the nature of their relationship. No one says that a loving happy marriage doesn’t have its problems or that it has to be perpetually conflict-free. Also, don’t forget that Jon’s presence in Winterfell was by Ned’s own decision. I’m not saying that Ned was wrong to bring Jon to Winterfell and I’m very sympathetic to his reasons and respectful of his desire to do right by an innocent child, I have a lot of respect for the man precisely because he acted as a father to Jon and gave him a family. But I’m under no illusion that this didn’t come at Catelyn’s expense, which is something that Ned himself was aware of. I am critical of how Cat treated Jon Snow, but it’s important to see that she wasn’t in the best situation either, because this is just another sign of how little control or say she had, even in her own home. The entire situation was inherently imperfect but while I do fault Cat for taking out her lack of control on the one person who had less control that she did and who also happens to be an innocent child, I’m not unsympathetic to her pain and anger over Ned’s indiscretions or to her fear for her children. The patriarchy says that Catelyn should accept that her husband would cheat on her, that this is a situation that she has to accept and has no right to change because her husband has the power, that she can’t be angry and resentful of Ned for the situation. For the sake of her marriage, for the sake of her children, Catelyn had to let go of her anger towards Ned but that anger does not disappear just because she pushed it down, so she redirected it onto the living reminder of her husband’s nominal infidelity who also happens to be a reminder of her lack of control. That is not an excuse for her actions with Jon that are objectively wrong but it is an explanation that shows that Catelyn is not inherently a bad person. She is a victim of her society and its social construct, which is one reason that makes her abuse of Jon gutting to me, since Jon is also a victim of their society and its social construct. Cat took her own disadvantage on the one person who was more disadvantaged than her. I can’t fault anyone for having negative feelings towards her over that particular situation since she was essentially kicking down at Jon and taking her problems out on a child, but this is far more complicated than “Catelyn is an evil person”.

Fallacy #3: Catelyn was a bad mother and person.

People are more complicated than the binary of “infallible” and “monster” that you seem to be operating on. Good people can make grievous mistakes regardless of their good intentions, and it’s not like those mistakes suck out their morality with them. Catelyn’s parenting wasn’t perfect. She pressures Arya to conform out of a conventional viewpoint and a desire to see her daughter lead a good life (as does Ned, btw), but ends up harming Arya. Her grief over Bran’s fall and coma and her exhaustion in keeping a vigil by his bedside puts pressure on Robb and hurts Rickon. Her abuse of Jon echoes through the family and inadvertently hurts her own children. Even the well-intentioned fail sometimes. Would you care to hear about the times Ned did too?

However, it remains that Catelyn’s entire character is build around her love for her family and her dedication to her children. She throws herself between an armed man and her comatose child with no thought to her life. She is constantly tormented by her distance from Bran and Rickon and blames herself for not being there for them. She is literally the only one who thinks that Sansa and Arya’s lives are worth trading against Jaime Lannister’s. She wants nothing but to send Robb to safety when she meets up with his army but recognizes that this would be extremely bad for his position. She bargains for Robb’s life while injured and spares no thought to her own life in the process. She refuses to accept that Arya is dead and holds out hope for her return. She champions Robb’s cause and does her level best to guide him, but also affords him space to grown on his own and is greatly proud of his leadership. No, I don’t consider Cat a bad parent at all, even with her mistakes. Those errors were a result of parental frailty and misguided protectiveness.

Questioning Cat’s personality in general doesn’t hold up either. She defends and befriends Brienne. She tries to reassure Edmure that their father loves and is proud of him. She feels guilty after Rickard Karstark kills the Lannister prisoners and feels his accusations acutely. She empathizes with Jeyne and reassures her of her place despite her displeasure with the marriage. She feels sadness for Mya Stone’s innocence over her doomed love with Mychel Redfort. There are places where Cat’s empathy fail her but if I denounce everyone who has a moment of failed empathy or who ever does a morally questionable thing, I’d be dismissing every single character in this entire series as a bad person. There are no perfect people in GRRM’s narrative, so what makes Cat’s imperfections specifically worthy of condemnation?

Fallacy #4: Catelyn should be blamed for Ned’s death, the ruin of House Stark and the Seven Kingdoms.

Right. Tyrion’s arrest. That did not start the war because the war was already in the works before the royal family even arrives in Winterfell.

I’m growing increasingly irritated with the tendency to blame any random Stark for the war which builds on deliberate dismissal of what everyone else was doing that led to the war. Sorry to say but the war was inevitable even if Catelyn never seizes Tyrion. It was inevitable because Stannis knew that the royal children were illegitimate and was preparing for war. It was inevitable because Renly knew that the royal children were illegitimate and was preparing for his own takeover. That guarantees a showdown with Tywin and the rest of the Lannisters no matter what, and puts Stannis and Renly on opposite sides. Don’t forget that Littlefinger and Varys were invested in pitting the Starks and the Lannisters against each other for their own gain as well. The entire situation was a powder keg waiting to blow long before any Stark stepped a foot in King’s Landing.

Blaming Catelyn, or any Stark really, for the War of the Five Kings and all it brought only serves to exonerate those who are responsible for it. Jaime and Cersei have an affair, pass their children as royal heirs and kill to maintain that fallacy. Jaime pushes Bran out of a window and Joffrey tries to have him killed. Cersei plots to have Robert killed and puts her plan into motion before Ned even finds out about the twincest. Baelish encourages Lysa to poison Jon Arryn and frame the Lannisters, then lies about the owner of the dagger used in the attempt of Bran’s life. He betrays Ned to Cersei and conspires till he gets Joffrey to kill Ned. Tywin Lannister sends men to burn and pillage the Riverlands, then plans with the Freys and the Boltons to murder Robb and his army at a wedding. Balon Greyjoy decides that avenging himself on a dead man is the height of power and embarks on an idiotic campaign in the North. Theon betrays the Starks and seizes Winterfell. Imagine having all that awfulness and all these contributing players to the war, but somehow finding the war Catelyn’s fault. Yes, I know the reasoning is that her arrest of Tyrion put the Starks and the Lannisters in open conflict and “made” Tywin attack the Riverlands. Except that Catelyn is not responsible for the fact that the Lannister go-to method is to commit war crimes and go stabby. A normal person could have protested Tyrion’s arrest to the king and painted the Starks as the aggressors but no, Tywin Lannister makes his own laws and he chooses to take it out on the Tullys’ smallfolk. That’s on him. Also, are we going to pretend that the Starks and the Lannisters weren’t already poised for a conflict after two attacks on Bran’s life? Or that Ned’s discovery of the twincest and his execution on Joffrey’s orders wasn’t going to drag the Starks into the war anyway?

Fun fact: of all the fighting factions in the War of the Five Kings, it’s Catelyn Stark who tries repeatedly to put a stop to the war. She pleads for peace in Robb’s council. She tries to broker an alliance between Robb and Renly, and points out that no one but Robb is doing a thing to protect the people against the Lannisters. She tries to get the Baratheon brothers to unify and reach an accord because common sense says that they all of them have the same enemy, and their conflict benefits no one but the Lannisters. Catelyn does not start the war, but she sure tries to end it. Sadly, no one listens to her.

Now please don’t come to me again with your victim-blaming, character bashing arguments.