#lol imagine talon learning this information

[skunkes]

sorry if this is a silly question but do you like. sit down and talk with your ocs in your head? and they tell you about themselves? how do you get them to reveal information....i am begging mine to let me know them orz

I do! In several different ways ^_^ the trick is to think of yourself as a character in your brain theater... ill mostly be explaining thru examples and using silly language ^_^ and its more How I Do It vs a how to....

"Sitting down and talking to em" interrogation style only happens before they're fully formed. when talon still didnt have very many traits it was like we were in a white room with 2 chairs... although you COULD make a scenario out of this its usually the Before for me. final tweaks in the form of basic traits and info before sending em out for further development

the way i get ocs to tell me about themselves is more thru actions! with talon I "locked him in a room" with al in the form of imagining how they'd meet. because I set it in talon's decrepit home with no running water or electricity, there come questions like. would he be accommodating? would he explain the vampirism or just rely on flashing his fangs or hiding them until its time to bite? these arent questions i actually went into the scenario having, but as you Play Dolls its questions that get answered anyway, ykwim? (although you could also go into the simulation (lol) with questions you want answered!) And its your brain so you can do as many takes and tweaks as you want, and things develop as you imagine the same thing, or different things, which all inform a character.

Scenarios could be anything. Im a serial daydreamer so anything goes depending on how bored I am or what im doing... and just like with real people, every scenario is a way to learn more about somebody...! It's like improv in your brain as you think up how they'd react and respond to things, and what they'd say. But also, going with your oc to the grocery store or a restaurant or to slay a dragon could give you insight into their behavior but likely not any info about their trauma or whatever, just like real people (but it also depends on the person) (and the oc!)

I DO have "sit down and talk" scenarios once i feel ive learned enough standard, early level friendship stuff about em though. It's much fun if you set the scene in your mind to mimic a real life Deep Conversation session. Sitting in the backyard on those plastic chairs, or aimless car ride at night. right now the one I keep going back to is just. Loafed in bed when you're really sleepy and just starting to say anything about anything and maybe get a little sentimental. sometimes its just me talking but I obvs have the ability to imagine how he'd be interpreting that in his brain, ykwim?? You play several roles at once I guess. It's like the sims, switching back and forth between povs, but the level of immersion i get into never feels like I'm Making Them Say It, it just feels natural at that point because I've learned enough.

There's also information that's shared by you figuring out what they'd Think (as above) vs what they say which is also fun characterwise... AND ALSO while im daydreaming scenarios I do multiple takes to find their voice. Like, I'm an overexplainer, a detailed therapy-speak-er. Sometimes I catch myself giving ocs that Voice and I have to do a retake. Like hold on, Talon would NOT be introspective. He wouldn't share all that shit I just "made" him say even if it is true and now I know about it. He'd say something insanely vague and confusing if anything at all. Let's take it from the top. etc

It rlly is about immersion! You have to have fun with it! Sometimes it's so Real to me that I genuinely can't develop an oc further because I cant make something up for them and they wont "tell me", which means I just have to spend more time with em I guess! or maybe need to leave em alone for a bit. or maybe ill never know (<- which also tells me about em!) just like real people. treat the fake people like real people in your fake dollhouse brain theater sims lot puppet show simulation.... also i added more in the tags bc i didnt know where to put it in the main txt 😭

[kffandom]

Do you have any Widowmaker & Mercy thoughts or any Widowmaker & Reaper thoughts you've had on your mind that you'd like to share?

sorry this has taken so long to answer! i really hadn’t thought too much about widowmaker and mercy interacting so i’ve been taking my sweet time on this lol (also sorry for the bulleted list instead of any actual narrative, i couldn’t really think of anything cohesive for both types of interactions but i had plenty for each and blech. blech i’m sorry i hope it’s alright)  

reaper is the one who decides to cut ties with talon, and half as a ‘fuck u guys’ and half as a ‘ok i’m a LITTLE fond of this one’ he basically kidnapped widowmaker since they had invested a lot of resources into her development/programming 

widowmaker, when he had the help of one of her “programmers” (who was a weird boy-man reaper doesn’t really know who ‘fell in love with her’ and ‘wanted her to be free so they could be together for REAL’ #creepy), was easy enough to knock out with one of her ‘trigger phrases’ (which reaper made sure to receive a comprehensive list of before making any moves to take her). creepy boy-man tried to tag along but reaper kicked him out of the van and locked the doors before they even got moving 

(i don’t know why anytime i talk about talon agents going anywhere they use vans but. there ya go.) 

she wakes up halfway through the van ride and sorta just. goes with it. reaper has no idea if this is still an effect of using one of her triggers or what, but. it makes the drive easier 

reaper says, shortly before they arrive, “i know they’re annoying. but they’ll help you.” 

“i don’t need help.” 

“whatever. they’ll be better bosses than talon at least.” 

(in the past, when i’ve written widowmaker, i’ve gone the “oh she’s loyal to talon and that’s what overwatch needs to overcome, but here, since seeing the comic where she remembered and appeared to still give somewhat of a shit about gerard, here’s what i’m thinking: 

we have amelie. nice enough amelie, who’s caught up in the mess that is #overwatch. who talon is spending a lot of money on, but who won’t. stop. crying. 

they don’t have complete brainwashing, you know. like they can do a lot, but if they want her to still be useful, they can’t do what they normally would. 

so they do some #BadMedicine. they go into her brain and they start chopping. 

what if widowmaker wasn’t created with programming (though it had a hand in them using her, later, in controlling her) but with them just. cutting out any parts that made her care. 

she still has all of her memories, but they took away her will and ability to give a shit. they didn’t even really change her personality--amelie was a sarcastic and harsh woman, but she had a huge heart and while her advice was gruff and along the lines of “you fucked up, now you have to fix it” she was genuinely invested in people’s problems and cared a lot 

but after they mutilated her brain, she just. basically did what she was told. she wouldn’t even eat without someone telling her she should once they messed with her biology enough to not recognize hunger or discomfort. 

so aka: that’s how you get someone fundamentally twisted from their origin with the least amount of effort and the least amount of actual change but with absolutely detrimental effects with my ~fake science~ nonsense lol. (listen they still have BS reasons for her being blue so i can ~fake science~ my way outta her backstory if i fucking want to) ) 

so anyway. reaper basically spends about a week figuring out which base mercy is at, and drops widowmaker off (kicks her out of the still-moving van) with the information he has on how talon “made” her, and gets the fuck out of there. just because he hates talon now too doesn’t mean he wants to be all buddy-buddy with overwatch now

they’re all unnerved by how widowmaker just. doesn’t do anything. like she snarks at them, and flirt-mocks lena, but otherwise, she’s very amenable. mercy asks her to join her in the infirmary, and she follows. mercy asks her to disrobe and put on a patient gown, and she does. mercy runs a barrage of tests, and she sits through them. 

at the end of it, mercy says, “well, i won’t be able to do much until i look at those documents you brought with you, but the baseline was needed before i was biased by anything i saw. is there anything bothering you that you’d like me to address? any injuries or hurts?” 

widowmaker snorts and doesn’t deign to answer her. 

“well, you will be staying here tonight. i’m sure someone will be around to keep an eye on you, but feel free to get some rest.” 

mercy then spends a long evening in her office-ish area (it’s a corner of the infirmary with a curtain around it and a rickety desk winston carried in for her, but it does its job well enough) going through these files. trying to fill in the blanks and create a map of what exactly they fucked up with her 

and around 5AM, she leans back and has to do some thinking. because amelie didn’t agree to these surgeries (obviously) and now she could be trying to undo what they’ve done, through multiple surgeries, without widowmaker’s permission. she thinks and thinks and tries to figure out if she should even bring it up with widowmaker if there’s a chance of her refusing 

because it’s barbaric, what they’ve done to her, but widowmaker might prefer not caring, or she might not view it as poorly as mercy does. or she might not be able to give an answer at all, because she can’t care about anything. 

it’s very, very tempting to just. do it. to just knock her out the minute she wakes up and go and /fix/ it

 (ignoring the fact that she isn’t 100% sure she can fix everything, that talon’s done some horrible, horrible things that even with her nanotech and her skills might not be reversible--she doesn’t think she could possibly make it worse, but. it’s been long enough that her brain has adapted and has learned how to function without the parts it had had, it has a level of plasticity that is normally only found in children, which on one hand means it could be easier to fix the damage, or it could be easier to ruin it more.) 

(she thinks and thinks and thinks and eventually, she carefully puts the files away and goes back to her room where she starts digging through her own old files. 

the one for shimada, genji, still haunts her. he has never said anything, has always seemed grateful, but it’s the patient that later made her realize how disconnected she became from the people she was helping. she feels tremendous guilt, and shame, and horror over the choices she made in regards to shimada, genji.  

it’s a reminder she needed, and she takes a deep breath, and she returns to the infirmary.) 

“widowmaker, let me talk to you about what the files you brought with me mean,” she says carefully. widowmaker is propped up in one of the infirmary cots and looking at her, unimpressed. mercy spreads out the files carefully and starts pointing out pictures and how things tie together

“you’re basically saying that they have mutilated my brain and you wish to fix it, correct?” she asks slowly. “will.... ‘fixing’ it make me more efficient?” 

mercy says, honestly, “i don’t know. it depends on how you define efficient.” 

“efficient for this organization’s purposes.” 

“for our purposes?” mercy asks, surprised. “on one hand, no, it won’t make you more efficient. you’ll probably question us and question what missions we want you to take, and you’ll most likely doubt yourself. 

“on the other hand, you’ll fit into our team better and begin to heal, and it would be a morale boost, which would, in turn cause the others to improve their abilities, i imagine.” 

“you’ll do as you wish, regardless,” widowmaker says blandly. 

“i want to know what you think,” she persists. “do you think this is a course of action that will be beneficial to you? as an individual?” 

“for your morals? most likely. for the purposes and uses i’ve been created for? no.” 

they go around in circles for much longer, but eventually mercy says, loudly, “if we are asking me as a doctor, i believe these surgeries attempting to reconstruct the parts of your brain that have been harmed would be the best course of action. do you or do you not consent to the treatment?” 

widowmaker stares at her for a long moment. tilts her head and stares a little longer. eventually shrugs and says, “i do.” 

(and that’s the beginning of widowmaker becoming something more than just an assassin.)