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veliseraptor · 5 years

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okay first of all im so glad you're talking about your ex-villain project!! i have been thinking about it for like a really long time & kind of wanted to ask about it but i was too nervous. if you ever publish it i will definitely read it, this is 100% my jam & i would die for all of your ocs. for the ask meme (it was REALLY hard to narrow down so you dont have to answer all if you don't want to) could we have 11, 16, 19, 26, 32, & 35 for all?

Friend, I will always love to talk about this project, it’s exciting and definitely easier than, you know, actually writing it. My OCs would definitely not die for you, I am afraid, except for maybe Yazdan. He might do it under the right circumstances. Nobody else, though.

Putting this under a cut because it got long…

How do they see themselves: as smart, as intelligent, uneducated?

Kazem: Oh, Kazem thinks he’s hot stuff. He’s prone to thinking he’s the smartest person in the room, which, unfortunately, he often is - at least in terms of knowledge and cleverness. And he knows this about himself, and is distinctly proud of it. He’s not so great on the common sense front, though.

Israt: She doesn’t necessarily see herself as intelligent - it’s not a part of her personality self-definition, anyway. She’s smart enough, as far as she’s concerned, but it’s not a defining characteristic, for her.

Yazdan: I’ve talked a little about how he struggles with seeing himself as uneducated, and how he’s very self-conscious about that. He’s smart enough but he doesn’t think of himself as particularly intelligent.

Jaleh: She’s fought hard for her education, and she thinks of herself as certainly clever, though she’s aware of the holes in her education. But she’s fairly confident in her intelligence just the same. It’s not the thing she values most about herself, though.

What does your character do for a living? How do they see their profession? What do they like about it? Dislike?

Kazem: Right now? Not much. It’s not like he has a lot of options for gainful employment. Yazdan is basically his sponsor helping keep him alive, though he keeps pushing Kazem to look for something to do, which he isn’t.

He’s not happy with it. He’s bored, and miserable, but he doesn’t really see a way out of it, either, when most people would hardly want to hire him (and might just want to kill him). Also, feeling sorry for himself is a full time job.

Israt: I referred to this in another ask, but she’s an Outrider who makes her living scouting the borders of the empire - not actively a soldier, but more of a scout and skirmisher. She deals a lot with the reality of the tension along the borders, particularly the western border with the Rome expy.

She likes it, more or less. It keeps her away from her home and family, it requires more work from her body than her brain so she can disengage from thinking too much, it takes her to interesting places, and there’s a certain glamour that lets her pick up most people she wants to. And she appreciates not having to stay in any place very long.

Yazdan: Professional heroism, more or less. Well, technically he’s in the employ of the empress (again, more or less), and there is an element of the spy to what he does, but mostly he puts out brush fires and is a demonstration of power to their neighbors.

He’s not totally pleased with this situation - it makes him feel a little dirty and used, sometimes. But he also feels like it’s what he needs to be doing, because someone does, and he’s the only person who seems willing to volunteer - especially after his role in Kazem’s fall raised his profile astronomically.

Jaleh: This is another “I could tell you but she’d have to kill you” question.

What were your character’s deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?

Kazem: Kazem’s older brother was pretty horrifically abusive, his parents did nothing about it, and at a relatively young age Kazem ended up killing him.

That’s…not the source of all his issues, necessarily, but it did found a lot of disillusionment with people in general, how they behave, and the prospects for people looking after him - it very much developed for him a sense of “I have to take care of myself because no one else is going to do it.” And the drive to accumulate as much power as possible so he’s never that vulnerable again.

Israt: Her sister’s death was a big one. Prior to that, Israt had a fair amount of freedom, or at least decided she did (her family didn’t appreciate it, but she still took it). After that…the world was a lot less safe, a lot less sure, and she had a lot more responsibility and a lot less belief in the fairness and justice of the universe. That’s kind of her breaking point when “minor disaster human” became “major disaster human.”

Yazdan: This is one where I don’t actually feel like I can answer it because of spoilers, but I can say that he feels like a fraud a lot of the time - in some ways his deepest disillusionment is in himself.

Jaleh: I also can’t say much here because of spoilers, but she had a hard life growing up and doesn’t expect much from other people - much help, much love, much affection. She’s very self-sufficient and her view of the world is pretty bleak. She thinks most people are fundamentally hypocrites who are just out for their own gain.

She’s very “every person for themselves,” which contributes a lot to her ruthlessness.

What does your character’s home look like? Personal taste? Clothing? Hair? Appearance?

I have the fancast here for appearance. When it comes to home…Kazem and Israt both don’t have a permanent one, and Jaleh’s is another one that I don’t want to answer in detail. Yazdan is also relatively itinerant, though he does technically have his own home adjacent to the palace. He doesn’t spend a lot of time there, though, as a rule, because he’s kind of uncomfortable with it.

How does your character react to stress situations? Defensively? Aggressively? Evasively?

Kazem: By turns either aggressively or with despair. When Kazem is stressed it’s either “take it out on everyone else” or “turn it inward and depression retreat away from the world.” There’s really not much of a middle ground. At least, that’s how it goes when he can’t control the stressful situation - if he can figure out how to white-knuckle control it and turn it to his advantage somehow then that’s fine.

Israt: Israt prefers to avoid stressful situations overall, though she’s really in the wrong job for it, and she actually is pretty good at crisis management - better than she gives herself credit for. She has a pretty level head when things go to shit around her. It’s when things are fine that she starts running into trouble.

Yazdan: Also tends to handle stress fairly well, because he needs to a lot of the time. It’s also why he spends a lot of time tired, though. (Tired and not showing it.) He is in a nearly constant state of low-key anxiety, though, which is maybe why he can “handle” it - he’s just sort of used to that being a state of being.

Jaleh: Thrives under stress. Adrenaline just gets her mind going, and when other people are buckling she takes a substantial amount of pride in her ability to knuckle down and keep going. Pressure just makes her better at whatever she’s doing. And she’s a little bit of an adrenaline junkie, in her own way.

Do they always rationalize errors? How do they accept disasters and failures?

Kazem: Poorly. Kazem is a perfectionist, and his ability to “roll with the punches” is roughly nil. He flips out about it every time, and doesn’t cope well with sudden changes in plan. He tends to both blame himself for not doing everything right and also everyone else in the vicinity for getting in the way. He is both the only competent person in the room and also solely responsible for things going wrong.

Kazem has, as you may have gathered, Issues.

Israt: She doesn’t rationalize errors - she just expects them. And tends to just let them happen and then move on by them while pretending they don’t bother her. It’s not that they don’t bother her, she’s just kind of “well, shit happens, the world is nasty and things go wrong all the time, so…” and keep on moving.

That’s her solution in most cases. Keep moving - the problems come when you stop.

Yazdan: Also poorly, though a little better than Kazem, and he tends to hold himself solely responsible. He doesn’t collapse in the same way, though - he’s more inclined to double down and try harder, though not always by actually changing course so much as just “well if I did this same thing but better it would have worked.”

Jaleh: Probably handles them the best of the four of them - though she tends to blame other people for her mistakes a lot. Also has the “I’m the only competent one in the room” thing, but that just means that when things go wrong it’s not her fault. She does adjust course more easily, though, and is more flexible about changing plans or accounting for the unexpected and adapting for it.

#anonymous #conversating #the ex villain project #sometimes i write things

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