Character questions!!!
Mouth Powers
Character questions!!!
Character questions!!!
pharadyne
Jedao 3, 4, 14
cacopheny
Dogma 3, 8, 9, and 14
Mouth Powers
3. What do they think others like or admire about them? Jedao has a distressing tendency to be full depression-brain "people don't actually like me because of anything about ME, it's just that I'm very charming and trick them into it"
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the fact that he IS very charming, a little bit default...not default-manipulative in a cold way, but definitely default 'puts work into being charismatic' doesn't help this
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but he does appreciate that he is smart and pretty and tells good jokes, which counts for a lot
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4. How do they know when they’re in love? (romantic or platonic) tbh I think Jedao is kind of bad at distinguishing?
Mouth Powers
like. he has a LOT of feelings about people all the time
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and the line between "I love you because you're a PERSON and I'm crowned with eyes and I SEE you and you are TRYING SO HARD" and "omg I'm IN love with you" is a weird nebulous boundary sometimes
Mouth Powers
especially since when he was alive, the three people he was in love with to some degree were 1) first puppy love whomst he got horribly killed, 2) his chief of staff whomst he was in FULL denial about because it would have been a totally unacceptable fraternization & abuse of power, and 3) Kujen, who was The Worst and there's a bunch of stockholm there
Mouth Powers
so like when he IS starting to fall in love with someone there's a tendency to push them away or to like, IMagine that it's impossible and he'll just comfortably adore them and cuddle them and obviously nothing will come of it (he was like this with both Quentin and Harry for periods)
Mouth Powers
but then when he gets past that it's very, idk, self-evident
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feelings too big for even him to ignore
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14. Have they ever doubted their own beliefs? (Spiritual, philosophical) hmmm not really?
Mouth Powers
Jedao gnaws at his believes like a dog, he's very smart and very full of conviction and very...he's not coldly logical but he is very good at compartmentalizing and facing things he doesn't want to, most of the time, so he isn't going to cling to many beliefs that have bad consequences that he's trying to ignore
Mouth Powers
what he doesn't arrive at by sheer incisive Crowned with Eyes intuition, he arrives at by a process of thoroughly thinking through things
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and some of that can change with new perspectives but it's not a matter of doubting and wondering, if he's not sure he assesses what he doesn't know and then goes in search of evidence fairly actively unless there is a reason not to
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pharadyne
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3. What do they think others like or admire about them? Dogma knows that he is Annoying and Nobody Likes Him
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any evidence to the contrary is fully bewildering to him at this point
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8. Do they believe that all people be treated as equal and have the same rights? no
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both on the level of like, 'what's a right?' and also the level of "I worked HARD and I deserve to be REWARDED" - so both sad AND dickish
Mouth Powers
deep down I think he does have a nascent sense of fairness that bubbles up sometimes, and fuels his temper, but he hasn't internalized it or codified it in terms of things he actually believes
Jay
Jedao 8 and 13, Dogma 2 (just the 2d part obviously) and 16
Mouth Powers
9. If they committed a crime, would they accept punishment willingly? yes, and there's canonically a heartbreaking few seconds of him in space handcuffs getting loaded onto the transport for god knows what fate after shooting a Jedi, even though that Jedi was a traitor
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and he just looks tired and scared and sad
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14. Have they ever doubted their own beliefs? (Spiritual, philosophical) yes, he is a gnawing hive of doubt and anxiety
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deep down he is just like, two big tubs of feelings: 1) BE LOYAL BE PERFECT ALL FOR THE REPUBLIC AND THE JEDI 2) i don't want to die
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and any time he is lightly jostled and these feelings slosh over their tops and mix a little bit, he explodes lightly
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and then the chemical reaction releases huge clouds of poison shame and anger gas just going every which way
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8. Do they believe that all people be treated as equal and have the same rights? Jedao is still kind of like, wildly cynical about 'rights' as a concept
Mouth Powers
he feels about it the way I feel about the idea of god
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which is to say 'that sounds like a really complicated idea and some versions of it might be really nice, and I see that you care about it a lot, but it's also clearly??? a thing??? you made up????'
Mouth Powers
it's not a thing
cacopheny
/pats Dogma. you're okay, kiddo
Mouth Powers
it's maybe a very useful fiction, but nobody HAS rights
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maybe the greatest purpose of civilization is to promote the fiction that they do
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but it's still just everybody agreeing to play that game together
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also tbh I think Jedao would find the idea of like, externalizing 'rights' and insisting they are self-evident or philosophically true to be very, very dangerous
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because in his universal the moral balance of the universe is strictly negative
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it's not up to the TRUTH how people should treat each other, it's up to PEOPLE
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and pretending that there's some way to prove it or something to rely on outside of personal committment strikes him as....vulnerable to someone coming along and saying the emperor has no clothes
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you can't sieve the universe and find a grain of justice
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so if we base our systems of justice on the idea that we totally can, where will our commitment be when Nietsche comes along
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....anyway and separate from that he's also low-key still deeply acculturated as a meritocratic autocratic communist so like
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he thinks intellectually that no one should ever be tortured, brainwashed/conditioned, or enslaved
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and that a society that doesn't feed, house, heal, and educate everyone has something to be ashamed of and work to do
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but the idea of something like the right of free speech would totally not be on his radar
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hell the right to not be murdered is not really on his radar
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and he fully believes people should be "treated differently" based both on behavior and ability
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he's only not a eugenicist because he's quite good at long term thinking and understanding perverse incentives and runaway feedback loops
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13. What could make them break their own moral code? I mean, it depends on which parts of his beliefs you consider 'his code'
Mouth Powers
he has tortured people and would theoretically still do so, because limited instance of his actions vs infinity of remembrances of the future
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but in terms of real personal vs principle
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he would betray his principles to some degree to protect Nico or Jaby
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he's just kind of out of fucks at a certain point, HIS SONS HAVE SUFFERED ENOUGH AND HE DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT
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FORGET THE CALENDAR ALL OF YOU CAN SUFFER FOREVER GIVE HIM HIS SON
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Do they want others to like them? Dogma goes back and forth on whether he KNOWS he wants other people to like him
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whether he's in "I'm not like other girls" denial, basically
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but yes he wants everyone to like him so much 
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16. What would they consider a fate worse than death? hmmm this is a little tricky because it's like he doesn't...think about it, in a rational way?
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but he would find an eternity of failure and humiliation to be unendurable
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his worse-than-death nightmares are like, "everyone pointing at him and saying that he's stupid and gets everything wrong and he's in the middle of the ship and everyone is staring at him shaming him"
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Jay
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What's worth than Death?
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Dogma: dog-shaming memes
Ptriciadactyl
Dogma
Ptriciadactyl
he hurts my heart
Mouth Powers
true facts in the couple months I've played dogma he's made me tear up more than 3 1/2 years of Jedao
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I know Jedao seems like the favorite but Dogma is all my anxieties in two heavily armed toddlers in a trench coat
Ptriciadactyl
Taura already loves him and feels like MUST PROTECT, Tris will probably also go very protective in a very short amount of time once we toss them together.
Ptriciadactyl
Dogma is a lot of anxiety but he tries so hard and you write his struggles really relatably. I'm not surprised you connect with him.
Ptriciadactyl
I also relate to his anxieties the way you write them!
Mouth Powers
dogma's anxiety is just 'me 10 years ago' a distressing amount
Mouth Powers
but also really cool to see that I've come a Ways
Ptriciadactyl
progress!