General Trudy Chacon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fieldpromoted) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
insertmeathere2011-01-21 08:06 pm
fieldpromoted) wrote in insertmeathere2011-01-21 08:06 pm
Entry tags:
No More Secrets Meme
Good evening meatship, I bring you your Friday meme!
No More Secrets
1. All of your character's darkest and most embarrassing secrets, the ones that they have been holding back from the crew, are now common knowledge.
2. Since not everyone knows everyone's canon, comment with your character and a bulleted list of the things they have been holding back from the crew. These can be funny things (that time I ran around with my underwear outside my pants), embarrassing things (Little Black Book-type secrets) or the dark things they never wanted anyone to know.
3. Other characters react to these sudden revelations about your character. Will it change the way people feel about each other?
IMPORTANT: PLEASE POST WARNINGS IN THE SUBJECT LINE IF SOMETHING IN THE COMMENT IS TRIGGERY. This meme has the potential to be a lot more dramatic than our usual fare, and I want to make sure everyone is comfortable.
Muns, have fun! Characters... well, I'm not sure "fun" applies.
1. All of your character's darkest and most embarrassing secrets, the ones that they have been holding back from the crew, are now common knowledge.
2. Since not everyone knows everyone's canon, comment with your character and a bulleted list of the things they have been holding back from the crew. These can be funny things (that time I ran around with my underwear outside my pants), embarrassing things (Little Black Book-type secrets) or the dark things they never wanted anyone to know.
3. Other characters react to these sudden revelations about your character. Will it change the way people feel about each other?
IMPORTANT: PLEASE POST WARNINGS IN THE SUBJECT LINE IF SOMETHING IN THE COMMENT IS TRIGGERY. This meme has the potential to be a lot more dramatic than our usual fare, and I want to make sure everyone is comfortable.
Muns, have fun! Characters... well, I'm not sure "fun" applies.
Thom of Trebond
- He holds nothing but contempt for the rest of the Masters, because of their inability to realize he was playing stupid during his tenure at the City of the Gods.
- Duke Roger fascinated him during his visit to the City of the Gods. Roger was the only man Thom ever met who could have posed a real challenge to him in terms of power.
- If Duke Roger had played his cards right and not tried to kill Thom's sister, Thom could have easily been swayed to his side, and probably into his bed as well.
- Thom doesn't care that Roger tried to usurp the throne. He only cares that Roger tried to kill his twin.
- He raised Duke Roger from the grave. To this day he doesn't know why. It is because he had a destructive rivalry-crush on the man, and because he was desperate to have someone alive who could be his equal.
- Thom prefers men. This is not exactly taboo in his world, but Thom is also the Lord of Trebond, and would have been required to produce an heir to the fief, so he has kept silent about it. This is one of the many things that fuels his general dislike of everyone - they are free to pursue who they will. Thom is not.
- Thom's magic is barely within his control because in the act of raising Roger, he absorbed Roger's Gift. Thus he carries two of the most powerful Gifts ever discovered, more power than anyone should have access to and still be alive.
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You would have to have met Roger to understand. I was... manipulated. He knew how to use my ego against me. Vicariously, while already dead. Which gives you some idea of the amount of charisma he wielded.
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The only part that worries me is you still seem unbelievably arrogant. And I wonder where that might get you in all this. Being powerful clearly doesn't mean you have any sense.
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[Oh, now we're getting at the heart of it, and now Thom is yelling.]
Nobody could hold a candle to me, in all my years! That isn't arrogance, it's truth- Alanna could best me in strength, but in magic? I was the greatest! I still am!
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[And obvious even to him. Duh.]
None of that makes you better than anyone else. None of that makes you into someone that can't be understood, some special creature that's all alone in the universe.
[You are not a special snowflake, Thom, just very, very powerful. But there are other people here that can blow up whole planets, so what does that power mean in comparison?]
Why put yourself on that pedestal, in that place where you're all alone?
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[Deep breaths. Lots of deep breaths. Losing his temper is not helpful.]
Earning Mastery at eighteen, passing the exams out of nowhere... No-one would speak to me before because they thought I was a bumbling fool. After the exams, no-one would speak to me because they were afraid. After the Ordeal of Sorcery they began to make the Sign when I passed them in the hall.
I was alone through their making, not mine.
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Isn't that perpetuating the cycle just a bit?
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[He really does sound like he doesn't care. And maybe a little depressed, but who's counting?]
In the end, everyone fears me. It doesn't matter how I try to approach it. In the end they see my power and they are afraid.
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People are afraid of things that can kill them. That's called having sense. When they try not to be afraid of things that can kill them, and stand up to someone for, say, being a jerk over something stupid like knocking over some books, and said jerk tosses them into bookcase, it tends to make that caution and fear just ever so slightly justified.
If you don't want people to be afraid of you, don't act so scary.
[Gods, Thom, logic. Logic. Dragon training tactics work remarkably well on people, you know? Drop your weapon, make yourself seem very gentle, slow movements, a soft voice, and most people won't think you're a threat.]
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Before I even arrived at Court they had already made their assumptions. Lord Master Thom, the most powerful sorcerer in the Eastern Lands, whose sister was the unnatural Lady Knight, whose sister slew Duke Roger, the only one who could challenge him.
What kind of conclusions would you draw? Probably the same as they did. Lord Master Thom the usurper, aiding and abetting his sister's quest for knighthood, besmirching the kingdom's name, shaming His Majesty.
It would not have mattered if I apologized to every Lord and Lady in the castle on bended knee. They would have hated me regardless.
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[Funny, he seems to be almost talking from personal experience here.]
That's when you stop caring about whether or not those people like you, and care more about other things that are important. Like the people that--that maybe give you more of a chance, and when they look at you, they don't see what all those other people see.
[Maybe sometimes they aren't even human-people, and they look at you with big yellow-green adoring eyes like you're best thing ever to exist.]
Or caring about fixing mistakes, or caring about--about making something wrong right. Eventually all the rest tends to fall into place.
You're not back home, you're on a ship stuffed full of powerful people and people who are used to being hopelessly outclassed by powerful people but generally don't care about it as long as they don't get murdered in their sleep. You're right that I can't know exactly what it was like for you. I don't know anything about being the strongest--I only know what it's like to be the weakest. But I do know that when I was mocked and teased and treated like an outcast for that, pushing everyone away, assuming they'd just hate me, too, wouldn't have gotten me anywhere.
You're not special here. But that also means you won't be automatically hated either. You'll only be hated if you're a jerk, just like anybody else who's a jerk.
[Logic logic logic, Thom. Logic!]
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It's too dangerous to start doing that-Why do you care?
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One, I don't want to see you lose your temper and magically explode someone, for their sake.
Two, I don't want to see you lose your temper and magically explode someone, for your own sake.
(And if you're wondering why I feel that way, both one and two are the marks of what is commonly know as "compassion.")
Three, most important of all, I know a little something about what it feels like to have everyone hate who you are for things you can't really help, and as someone who's mostly through all that, watching you do this preemptive "slam people into walls so they never get a chance to hate me on their own" thing is almost painful. It's like watching someone repeatedly run into a wall themselves. Very self-destructive.
That pesky compassion thing again. Unsightly in a Viking, but there it is.
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You pity me. How quaint.
I do not want or need your - your concern.
[He spits that word like it offends him.]
Once I have determined how to bleed away this taint, your first two points will be irrelevant anyway. If I could be left in peace to do so it would go so much the faster.
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Pity is when you feel bad for someone else, but do it with slight contempt. Compassion is when you feel bad for someone else, but because you recognize they're a complex individual, that probably has some value as a person, and the part of you that just generally cares about other people pipes up and makes you see something of yourself inside them and something of them inside you.
Admittedly, it's not something my people are great at, in general, but I'm not really like the rest of my people.
But you go ahead and keep on misinterpreting every single thing I say in an attempt to scare me away from trying to be friendly at you if it makes you feel more at ease.
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[He can't allow himself to be friends with anyone. Sooner or later they will find a reason to hate him. It always happens. Better to never let it happen.]
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