Elya: Silence. Sometimes, she wouldn’t speak for days. She liked the way silence made her feel. Quiet. Words were such complicated, meticulous things that needed a tool to be wielded with efficiency. A blunt tongue. A sharp tongue. A soft tongue. In her world, people never said what they meant. Double-meanings, intentions shoved between spaces, games and mockery and poke, prod, poke, prod. She supposed it was why she liked her work so much. It was often brutal. Going places, seeing unimaginable horrors, slicing and dicing. It was mechanical, almost. Relied on action. Muscle memory. She would rather spar with a demon than socially spar with any member of the aristocracy. And, most importantly, she could never be condemned for saying something that got her or someone else in trouble. People had died because of her words. She had been placed in this life because of her words. It was better to say nothing and do more. And, when concerning friendship, who wants to talk to someone who doesn’t talk back? Very few people.
To answer bluntly and to summarize: Fear of rejection and the consequences. If you keep people at a distance, they can’t hurt you and you can hurt them. It’s a much simpler existence, if not a lonely one.
Haha, kinda. She is… delusional, thinking she is content when she’s really not. It’s more like she’s resigned herself to her fate. She eventually does open up, but it’s a really tough and long journey with lots of bumps in the road.
This honestly depends on the situation so I can’t answer it well
This one would apply most to Xix (before she started being around the rest of the MCs).
Xix is the only child of the Dark King so a lot of people hate her because she looks a lot like her father and has his power, but the two are extremely different people. Even so, people still make a point to avoid her because of her family history. It wasn’t until she started hanging around the rest of the MCs that people started warming up to her, but there are still more people that hate her than not
Prompt 5: Tell me what is the ONE THING they’re so horrible at doing? What do they suck at?
Richard from Alive At Crepusculum is manipulative, charming, cunning, and can think on his feet. But the one thing he cannot do (and he blames his demon for this) is sing on key. He is the worst singer and he knows it. It irks him. That’s what entertains his demon
Aeris sucks at confidence and even defending herself. Being a Tirron who was severely rejected and abused for something she couldn’t help, she was unable to stand up to others when she was battered and beaten by a cruel world.
Isilynor sucks at being kind and understanding to others. She is a Ravkalyn and the curse affects her greatly and even her mother is also affected by that too. She is so attracted to immense strength and powerful individuals, that warps her way of thinking in a toxic sorta way. Yet if she is the strongest in the situation, she is cocky, rude, spoiled and psychotic.
Diego is short and direct with his words, so he can come across as blunt or difficult to make small talk with unless it’s about the case he’s working on. I’d say he’s introverted, keeps to himself for the most part, and isn’t in the habit of being friendly with other paranormal investigators at the league he works at. His other reasons for not having many friends is 1) less people he becomes close with, less suffering should something happen to them or to himself as a result of his work, and 2) internal conflict regarding a certain “addiction” he’s developed and being torn about it enough to prefer keeping it a secret, especially as it could have severe consequences if he ever indulges in it too much such as becoming the very monsters he hunts
Prompt 6: Pick a bad character. Tell me, what they think of themselves as?
I felt kinda bored, so I have a new prompt for you guys. This time you have to pick a particular type of character. You gotta pick a meanie and tell me what they think of themselves as. Do they see themselves as a good guy or a mean one? What justifications do they give for their actions?
Mine: from Their Posthumous Lives duology
Will Cooper
I had this idea for Will Cooper, the local bad boy, that he’s from a family of poverty and is the oldest child. Maybe his parents are either abusive or negligent. Maybe the mother is a victim of DV. Something happens and Will is forced to leave the house, or he leaves willingly at a vulnerable age like twelve or thirteen when his brain is still developing. Maybe this is when he joins the cult.
The mean things he does, like murder and thievery, he sees them as necessary evils at first. He’s taught by bad people and does bad things to survive. And then he gradually becomes the evil, doing evil things without being prompted because no one is there to tell him otherwise. He doesn’t see himself as a villain. In fact, he sees it as he’s trying to survive in the world and he’s found his purpose serving the cult.
He’s promised a share of the wealth that will come when the god rises and Will sees all his actions as being justified for that end goal. He still thinks about his mother and wants to give some of that money to her, and get her out of the house, away from the husband. He might even think of himself as her savior. Maybe he does return once and she rejects his “dirty money”.
Mephisto von Thornwood is a psycho with strong opportunities that dance on the edge of anti-heroism and pure villainy.
The guy is flawed and the only one in his family to “see the light” that was destroying his family, but instead of trying to free them, he is more concerned with reclaiming the throne, even if that means watching his family fall apart and die.
So, he’ll rebuild over their corpses, the empire of his dreams.
Over all, yes he views himself as a bad…no, a flawed yet malicious person.
My villain is 20-year-old Cuthred, newly crowned king after his oldest brother was assassinated. Like all European royalty of the time, he believes in rule by divine right, that he simply has a right dictated by God to tax the people in order to live large at their expense. He’s based in part on the real life King George IV, only much more evil. (♯^.^ღ)
So I’d say he sees himself as good, but everyone else sees him as he really is. (♯ᴖ.ლ)
Oh that’s an easy question. Kek thinks he’s hot shit when everyone else sees him as a pain His main justification is “because I wanted to” and he sees himself as some badass villain when, in reality, he’s more of an annoying anti-hero
Kalar is one of those ‘necessary evil’ types. On an objective level, Kalar knows his actions are condemnable and evil–but he feels justified in his actions and sees no other path to attain his goals, so he reasons with himself. No one understands death better than him, he knows full well the fate he is giving his victims, and he makes no apologies for the man he’s had to become, the man they made him become. Moreover his goals, in some sense (and on a surface level), are not evil, which making his actions and goals very complex and layered. The protagonist and co. root for him. The reader roots for him. I have to debilitate for hours upon each word he says, each move he makes, because Kalar is another character entirely. He is a façade of a human being, but under that façade is a deep inner conflict, whose intentions are very muddy and complex.
His goals are good, and surround a good purpose. His ulterior motives, however, are less pure. At the end of the day he is a broken, desperate man clawing at a justice that seems and feels utterly unattainable to him. His goals are far more reaching than anyone around him has the ability to understand. So, on some level, he uses their own desires and manipulates them–desires to rid the injustice from the world, to kill their oppressors and see freedom be bestowed upon a people who’ve been coddled, corralled, and forced into a dictatorship that abuses their human rights and strips them slowly of free will–as pawns in his own, bigger and greater scheme.
At the end of the day, he is what an utterly desperate man fed an injustice so great that he is willing to do anything, become anyone, becomes. He makes no apologies and feels no remorse for the things he does, because he feels, on some level, it’s deserved.
That could be Saint Nirvana/Annika. She feels she is a bad/horrendous person or being in her case, deity. The truth is that she is misunderstood and flawed. There are times she’ll scream the villain, but there is an underlying meaning behind it. So, she isn’t truly evil, yet she thinks that she’s a villain/baddie, and other times it does show.
With what happened in the heavens, that led her to fall and the many things after, she is struggling to understand herself and failing at it.
She also sees herself as a horrible mother and grandmother, though with all the things she’s going through mentally and emotionally…parenting isn’t for her.
