DEAN ( 14 ) AU time: pick a different culture or social class than the one your character is from. What might they have been like if they’d grown up in that place/position instead?
just like. the fact that i imagine mary still would have trained them on how to defend themselves and stuff, if not outright hunting, just in case. so he'd still know, and he'd still have a little of the skill, but
still very himself, still protective to the core, but he'd do it in a more Bobby capacity, from a single place instead of on wheels. he'd let himself build a home and feel like he deserved it.
dean without the toxic masculinity and self-loathing is a wild thing to think about and i'd love to play it one day. i did it for about 2 seconds in a hard au event in a game once, but it was all fucked up because it was hunger games setting so that skewed things a bit but
gimme 9 for Jack svp. would also love to gobble up anything you want to offer on 2 and/or 3 and/or 4 if you're feeling any of those, I am greedy for your thoughts
other than pig latin? lol no, not with any fluency. i think he has more exposure to french than your average american, being from Louisianna, and i think he uses french phrases and knows a few words here and there like moreso than your standard guy, but he doesn't even speak it conversationally
i think the area he grew up in is tiny and insular, if they offered any language classes it would be taught by some guy who didn't speak it, who was probably also the football coach
JACK ( 2 ) Is your character happy with the place that they live? If not, what don’t they like about it? Are they trying to leave? Would they be able to if they did try?
Jack isn't happy so much as he is... content? resigned? He's one of those classic cases of a reasonably intelligent social liberal being stuck in a small, ignorant conservative town
He knows the place, he knows the people, he knows the ways in which it is problematic and the ways in which he doesn't fit in with the norm — but that means he's also accustomed to it, and an expert in navigating it.
when he was a teenager he had grand designs to leave. he intended to once, even, but the moment he tried, the moment he earnestly tried, he had the most important thing in his life taken from him and with it went the will to change
also, he physically wouldn't be able to for 90% of the series. powers beyond his control would stop him. lol. but once that was taken care of, once he addressed his Sabine issues and his depression a little and the means became available, actually moving on would be his endgame and he would probably never come back
he has a mild sort of like. judgment for most folks in the area with him, but he also innately understands their inner workings. but he ALSO has kind of a judgey mcjudgerson attitude toward people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, i think he instinctively considers them entitled or like. oblivious. unaware of the "Real Struggle".
JACK ( 4 ) What are your character’s political beliefs? If your character is from a fictional world, are there political parties or groups that share these beliefs?
exceptionally liberal, very left-leaning. i think he'd have voted for bernie sanders if he thought his vote made a difference and could overcome the apathy enough to actually vote
(i think jack the actual irl author person probably DID vote, but jack the character wouldn't bother)
the real, secret endgame of everything we're writing is clearly to guide him into a revolutionary class consciousness (which he will do nothing with, nothing changes)
IAN ( 13 ) Imagine your character walks into a party, bar, or other room full of people and feels instantly at home, among their own kind, etc. What kind of people are there?
honestly Ian is the sort of character that can walk into a room populated by just about any type of person and seem perfectly at ease, perfectly comfortable. He's a super duper People Person, very easy going, a total fucking hippy on the outside — that's what he projects, anyway
IAN ( 14 ) AU time: pick a different culture or social class than the one your character is from. What might they have been like if they’d grown up in that place/position instead?
part of the basis of Ian's character is that he grew up in poverty, that his mother had to work 2 jobs just to keep food on the table and, as such, was never at home — leading to a very latchkey upbringing where he fixated on his mom but also felt very lonely, and when he lost her, he completely stopped letting himself get attached to anyone
if he grew up with enough money that his mother didn't have to work so much, that she could be more involved with his life and he could have more opportunities, i think he'd be
well, less independent, he'd have spent less time filling his emptiness with reading and studying and taking things apart and putting them back together, so it's possible he'd have been a little worse off educationally speaking, he might never have gone into engineering, he might never have started working at berkeley
but he'd have had closer friends, maybe a girlfriend or a boyfriend he eventually married, with a much less well-paying job than he eventually wound up with, and it's entirely possible he'd have been in exactly the wrong place when the ships touched down as a result, consequently fucking dying
ok I do have one solid one. I can't think of a way to phrase this which doesn't sound like I'm arguing w you, which I absolutely am not, but: wtf do we think was the deal with the apocryphal french chapter then? the lost texts? the undelivered promise/threat? yes, it still haunts me
it would be some insane ass shit he wrote in a total fugue state, just pages and pages and pages of something he does not even understand, cannot translate, that he does not remember writing
well yeah but it's much more fun to try to place it in the framework somewhere. I also was thinking channeled text from the inexplicably francophone beyond
and when translated, would probably either turn out to be one of those long-winded blog posts that come before a recipe you found online about someone's summer trip to Maine, or it would be detailed instructions on exactly how to build a bomb
I have like a need that's between 1 and 3: Hear me out. I want to know how Dean navigates this basically how childhood (/that was never one) where he was raised in a car, just John, and the incredibly rare one-off other hunters & finding out there's this whole other world with a huge interconnected hunter network, AND how he navigates 1/3 from those spaces
DEAN ( 12 ) Your character believes something that is at odds with what the rest of their family and/or friends believe. Do they talk about it with them? If so, how do they approach the subject?
So, when it comes to his family and fundamental differences, when it's not the heat of the moment Dean can be pretty diplomatic. What he'd likely do is wait until a moment of downtime, when things are settled and the person seems calm, maybe over a beer or while stripping guns or something
...which is a great start and all, but he's also inherently a very passionate person whose opinions are tied deeply to his emotions, so it probably wouldn't take very long into the conversation for him to have a personal stake in it and for him to start getting like
and depending on the subject matter and his mental state at the time, he might either call the whole thing off and change the subject, or if it's particularly Big or Bad, he'd go full angery bitch mode and storm out lmao
lmao he is not. fashionable. he's also not cringe-ly unfashionable, but he's very much a jeans every day, hoodies every day, graphic t-shirts, long sleeves underneath type of guy
he's poor, he lives on a gas station salary — even when he owns the station it barely stays afloat financially, so he gets most of his clothes from like goodwill or walmart, with the occasional splurge on a t-shirt if he really likes it, or a good hoodie if he's really feeling it
he doesn't really care, he thinks he has no reason to dress up, nobody he cares about impressing, he just doesn't give a shit so he's not really bothered by the fact that he can't afford nice things
DEAN ( 1 ) Does your character feel like they fit in with the culture they grew up in, or were they out of place? & ( 3 ) Describe your character’s social/economic class. How do they feel towards people from other classes? Their own?
but specifically about isolation and growing up in a car
so, I think that here and there sprinkled throughout the series, Dean mentions old friends of John's, old hunting buddies of John's, and while it's NOWHERE near as frequent as Jo would have experienced living in the hub that is the Roadhouse, I think it happened often enough that Dean was aware of a sort of
he would have seen Bobby doing the Bobby thing, being the Bobby networker that he is, and he would know sort of loosely that folks keep in touch, everybody knows somebody that knows a guy, HE just didn't know them personally because his dad wasn't keen to let him be privvy to any of it until he passed on his journal and until Dean stepped up
it's less that he felt isolated or oblivious to things and more that he felt like John didn't trust him enough or didn't see him as grown up / adult enough to be part of the network and so there was this drive to prove himself and this hope that one day he would earn john's approval enough to be brought more directly into the fold
I think he feels like he fits in, but that John did him a disservice by deliberately icing him out in his later teen years when he could have done a better job helping Dean have connections to folks
largely because John was a huge dick himself and all those connections were a purely business / personal goal motivated thing with no heart and no loyalty and no sense of comraderie, John I think used folks in a way that Dean never would or did
maybe John was trying to look out for his kids by minimizing the amount of contact they had with the life, but all he succeeded in doing was minimizing their contact with ANYONE, so the boys became isolated and codependent instead
But yeah, I think despite what John may have intended, Dean was never quite as far removed from the network of hunters as John WANTED, but he was still more removed than what would have been good for him, so it was to his detriment. But. By his early 20s, he late-bloomed himself into the hunting community and made up for lost time.
I think about these things (the above ones) a lot when I think about John being at the Roadhouse with the Harvelle's, not often, but enough they knew him, basically considered dear (Until), but the kids weren't part of that.
It's also why I like love a) them in the Roadhouse in S2/3/etc, and b] the bunker becoming like station central after Apoc (in whatever 13? 14? something?), before of course you have to burn and bleed and kill everyone for ALONE TRAUMA ONLY BROTHERS ALLOWED.
John would have done better by his kids to bring them into the Roadhouse too and let them actually meet people in their own demographic, let them actually socially interact with folks who understood what it was like to be hunter kids
And the utter reliance of his kids only himself or each other (and Bobby when he was there, or left in charge of them, while John ran off into the wind plusboyshome)
Not gonna lie. Can't focus. Last ten minutes of last class. I'm drumming my fingers here, deciding if I want to drop a texty starter on you. From all this. Like right now.
The problem is I want EVERYTHING across this timeline already. (I want when it's all happening already; which is absolutely going to end up being a starter at some point far too soon, nt srry you stole my head.)
But younger for that one, maybe? Depending on when you think the plan would have come up as like "THIS IS WHAT WILL BE IT, Now I share it"
A or B, but maybe more B? But also, I can manage all. We can also futz with the gap for convenience depending etc etc etc if you need, as I don't really care given it's not egregious to me.
DEAN ( 10 ) Does your character act differently around strangers than they do around friends? Do they act differently around people from their native country or hometown than they do around people from elsewhere? If so, how dramatic is the difference?
Yes, dean acts differently around strangers — he puts on his Charming Extrovert face, he summons up all of his charisma and pretty effectively pretends to be Joe Midwesterner or Joe Southerner depending on where he's at in the moment
he's a social chameleon when he needs to be, and he's good at it, but it drains his batteries a little because deep down he's an introvert who likes spending time with like. 4 specific people.
DEAN ( 13 ) Imagine your character walks into a party, bar, or other room full of people and feels instantly at home, among their own kind, etc. What kind of people are there?
CONNER ( 5 ) Is your character religious? If so, do they follow the (or one of the) major religion(s) of their culture, or a different one? If not, are they more of an atheist, agnostic, or spiritualist (or none of the above)?
Conner is not religious. His mother may have loosely been Catholic before she met his father, but any semblance of that was well and truly gone by the time Conner was old enough to understand such things
like folks in his gang who would wear a cross and pray to god before they went out and did crime would sort of amuse him like 'hey put in a good word for me while you're at it lol'
CONNER ( 10 ) Does your character act differently around strangers than they do around friends? Do they act differently around people from their native country or hometown than they do around people from elsewhere? If so, how dramatic is the difference?
Yeah, around strangers Conner is generally quiet, reserved, and assessing. He likes to watch people to get a sense of who they are, and tends to stay in his own corner in group dynamics until he understands who he's around
he doesn't associate with his family or with the gangs he ran with in his youth, and at this point if he ran into them he'd be more inclined to treat them standoffishly or with mild hostility than embrace them
CONNER ( 14 ) AU time: pick a different culture or social class than the one your character is from. What might they have been like if they’d grown up in that place/position instead?
If he'd have grown up with loving parents or been adopted into a better home environment as a teenager (like by blue's bother), conner would have been a good boy
what he was looking for was a family, what he found was a gang. the things he was doing for them didn't matter so long as they accepted him and he could let himself believe they cared about him
BUCKY ( 5 ) Is your character religious? If so, do they follow the (or one of the) major religion(s) of their culture, or a different one? If not, are they more of an atheist, agnostic, or spiritualist (or none of the above)?
bucky is not religious, and is actually more likely to be openly disparaging of religion. his father being a devout and oppressive catholic that made him attend mass every sunday as a youth really tainted the experience for him
BUCKY ( 14 ) AU time: pick a different culture or social class than the one your character is from. What might they have been like if they’d grown up in that place/position instead?
growing up in the shitty era he did with Steve really helped influence his morals in a positive way, like having Steve there to challenge the societal norms at the time helped him build a foundation better than he could have managed had he grown up without the guy
i also think he gives Steve credit for conclusions that he may have come to on his own, like he says his moral compass is 'what would steve rogers do', as though he needs that external influence, like he wouldn't be able to tell what the Right Thing would be on his own, when in reality
so i think if you take him out of the 20s-40s and put him in like. 1990-2020 the only big difference is he'd be more pop culture savvy, he'd just have somebody else to attribute to his 'what would x do' question, like sam wilson
( 14 ) AU time: pick a different culture or social class than the one your character is from. What might they have been like if they’d grown up in that place/position instead?( 9 ) Does your character speak any languages other than their native tongue(s)? If so, where did they learn it/them? Do they use it regularly?( 2 ) Is your character happy with the place that they live? If not, what don’t they like about it? Are they trying to leave? Would they be able to if they did try?( 3 ) Describe your character’s social/economic class. How do they feel towards people from other classes? Their own?( 4 ) What are your character’s political beliefs? If your character is from a fictional world, are there political parties or groups that share these beliefs?(i think jack the actual irl author person probably DID vote, but jack the character wouldn't bother)
( 13 ) Imagine your character walks into a party, bar, or other room full of people and feels instantly at home, among their own kind, etc. What kind of people are there?( 14 ) AU time: pick a different culture or social class than the one your character is from. What might they have been like if they’d grown up in that place/position instead?( 12 ) Your character believes something that is at odds with what the rest of their family and/or friends believe. Do they talk about it with them? If so, how do they approach the subject?( 8 ) Is your character fashionable by the standards of their culture? If not, is it a choice, lack of money, or something else?( 1 ) Does your character feel like they fit in with the culture they grew up in, or were they out of place? & ( 3 ) Describe your character’s social/economic class. How do they feel towards people from other classes? Their own?
but specifically about isolation and growing up in a car
Dean dreaming of running a hunter bar.
Dean would have fit into this lock-and-key way so much.
Em, does that mean Bill’s still alive too.
And the goddamn spotlight of her soul.
Because Ellen, and Bill, and John, and her family is absolutely the example of how this can work all across.
far too soon, nt srry you stole my head.)But younger for that one, maybe? Depending on when you think the plan would have come up as like "THIS IS WHAT WILL BE IT, Now I share it"
( 10 ) Does your character act differently around strangers than they do around friends? Do they act differently around people from their native country or hometown than they do around people from elsewhere? If so, how dramatic is the difference?( 13 ) Imagine your character walks into a party, bar, or other room full of people and feels instantly at home, among their own kind, etc. What kind of people are there?( 5 ) Is your character religious? If so, do they follow the (or one of the) major religion(s) of their culture, or a different one? If not, are they more of an atheist, agnostic, or spiritualist (or none of the above)?( 10 ) Does your character act differently around strangers than they do around friends? Do they act differently around people from their native country or hometown than they do around people from elsewhere? If so, how dramatic is the difference?( 14 ) AU time: pick a different culture or social class than the one your character is from. What might they have been like if they’d grown up in that place/position instead?( 5 ) Is your character religious? If so, do they follow the (or one of the) major religion(s) of their culture, or a different one? If not, are they more of an atheist, agnostic, or spiritualist (or none of the above)?( 14 ) AU time: pick a different culture or social class than the one your character is from. What might they have been like if they’d grown up in that place/position instead?