#igotasked

kimon: his whole problem with prophecy and fate. there were no witnesses and the only way for people to find out is if he tells them. and he sure as shit isn’t going to claim any of that, because his chances of getting away hinge on there being as little connective tissue between him and the fated bullshit.

vaal: vaal struggles with setting boundaries so bad e doesn't have the sense of privacy to keep secrets of eir own. and like sure e wouldn’t love if certain facts about em got out and were used to paint them out as a violent monster — like eir love of fighting, or, uh, other preferences — but e’s comfortable sharing all of that with at least kimon, if not with everyone else close to em.

arin: as a teen, they broke into a protected ancient sacred site and committed light desecration when they stole an artifact from there. the consequences for this getting out would be immense.

tess: i’m sorry, i’m fully drawing a blank. it’s something actually inconsequential but something that feels mortifying. like having puked on your middle school crush type of thing. 

sam: her hallucinations. they’re not a problem, and she doesn’t want to worry others needlessly, nor be looked down upon or coddled or treated differently in any way. with any other issue she’s able to be rational and trust her loved ones, but the hallucinations are a special case. partially because she’s pretty sure they’re just caused by stress, and she knows they don’t fit in any spiritual frameworks she knows. she’d rather not get outside confirmation though. she finds comfort in the thought of being visited and having company during her tough times. 

kimon: i’ve alluded to ascension being a fate worse than death in most cases in this world. yeah. kimon is at huge risk of getting spiritually spaghettified. he is keenly aware of this, as he has met a predecessor of sorts who got stuck in one of the worst outcomes of this, and the fate/prophecy targeting him is linked to it too. he is not taking steps, he’s running at full tilt to get as far as possible from it. using his power to do specific kinds of healing is one part of that.

vaal: so vaal is kind of doomed to the world-eater scenario. specifically becoming sort of a reaper for it. e has absolutely no clue. at the point where e’s would be getting signs and eir alarms would start blaring, e wouldn't have time to even resist getting taken over. oops! 

arin: dying disgraced and destitute. a scorned failure. they occasionally catastrophize about it, but also realistically anticipate it as the end result if, for example, they were trying to take shortcuts and cheat to accomplish their goals. they're literally working to prevent it.

tess: having her spirit broken, never getting to control her own life, being unable to make a difference in the world. her relative getting away with their schemes while she gets disposed of. like arin, she's very aware of the possibility, and working hard to avoid it. she is very focused on making her relative to answer for their crimes and to gain her freedom. 

sam: her worst future would be one of loneliness after her community collapsed. she is consciously trying to prevent it by preventing or fixing potential root causes. people dying as their working and living conditions deteriorate, infighting tearing them apart, that kind of stuff. 

2. Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind? 

yes, i created them with the rest of the six in mind. they're someone who can match leskel’s status and go against him on the court of high society.* with kimon and vaal, she catches on to their shady past and has both the motivation and the means to start digging — and then later to vouch for them. (and they were also created to be part of a medical case for kimon to solve, naturally.) arin and her i created to work together rather superficially, as in she's rich enough to have commissioned stuff from them. 

the first and biggest thing in my mind tho was to create a butch/femme pair with her and sam. 

*(i don't know how else to put this in short. the city doesn't actually exactly have a victorian high society. but you get the vibe.)

4. In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts? 

thing is, her backstory is a work in progress still. currently the most influential parts are like, societal and legal matters. she's under an unjust conservatorship of sorts so that an opportunistic relative can use her vote on a council of sorts, and access her resources. she also lost her immediate family to an illness she suspects to have something more to it. (it does. horror levels of more. if you've heard me talk about wandering corpse piles, that's related.) up in the air but likely that she will enter the narrative when someone close to her seems to have caught the same disease but the family doctor and the conservator dismiss her as delusional.

also, being a giant and growing up in that culture. 

8. What (if anything) do you relate to within their character/story? 

being sharp and knowledgeable but hindered by lack of experience and a living situation that is counterproductive for getting more of it. i’m also piling all my more autistic-coded traits on her, mainly a tendency for formalism, and the “oh shit i missed this whole aspect that changes the meaning of this thing.” and we definitely share a frustration with obviously inefficient or counterproductive things and the Need To Fix. 

11. Did you know what the OC’s sexuality would be at the time of their creation? 

yup! they're a femme lesbian. and i first planned for her to end up in a relationship with sam, but we’ll see how it goes once i actually get around to writing their story.

14. If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be? 

the gilded cage. she has been sheltered her whole life, controlled for a latter part of it, and it would have eaten her alive if she didn't have such a blaze of passion and determination inside her. she will break out and she will change the world if that's what it takes. but because she's been sheltered, she has a very abstract idea of freedom, and what she wants to do with it. also, she's so focused on breaking free, she tends to have tunnel vision. 

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)?

this is so HARD because kimon is actually a compound of two old rp characters of mine. my very first rp character, siegfried, was an aggressively ordinary and well-adjusted farm boy who is doing the journeyman portion of his apprenticeship to become a carpenter. kimon’s appearance is directly derived from him, and in a way he’s an older siegfried that went through darker shit. as in, they share a certain shounen protagonist vibe. kimon’s namesake is another, later rp character, who himself was a spiritual successor to siegfried! the idea of a field/combat healer who is desperately trying to get away from the circle of violence comes from this proto-kimon.

as you can see, i tend to come up with characters concept first. for kimon too, my first thought was "hey, it would be cool to really fuck around with the idea that a necromancer is just a very late healer. maybe have a healer character who accidentally turns himself undead/into a lich.” then immediately after, if not simultaneously, i smashed old characters together to create a base to add to, haha!

3. How did you choose their name?

so i did not want to reuse the name siegfried, because it’s long and would be shortened to either sieg or fried and i don’t like either of them, and i’m pretty sure i chose it just because learning that nightmare from soulcalibur was actually siegfried was hilarious to me at the time. (i was around 15, it was like… 2007 or 2008?) kimon was the more recent oc that was a closer relative to current kimon, so i went with kimon for him too. i don’t… like the old kimon much, outside of the field healer aspect. it was kind of a rough spot in my rp career. i’m p sure the name came from a random generator, or from some baby name site? i just vibed with it. though… for a while i was worried people would think i just yoinked the final o from kimono. I think there were joking drawings of him in a kimono because of it? anyway. the name also fits the naming language i fucked around with for a while, so that’s why it stuck.

(and yeah it’s pronounced ki-mo-n, stress on the first syllable, because it stems from the time when i was writing exclusively in finnish. idk how else people might be inclined to pronounce it tho? let me know if you read it in a different way!)

14. If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be?

he has literally died and reanimated himself to keep going. to keep protecting and healing those important to him. he will say it’s because he had no other choice due to the circumstances, and yet he keeps destroying himself instead of leaning on others.

under the cool and controlled exterior, this is a short guy who has had to get incredibly tough very young and has since been marathoning Challenges. there’s an Attitude to him. on the anime vs mmo healer spectrum. he’s wayyyyy in the ”get up, you die when i say so” corner. small dog energy, but not the impotent rage type, but the type where you’re scared for your life.

19. What is your favorite fact about your OC?

vaal: learned a harsh life lesson about trusting nice helpful guards as a kid. as in, got tricked into revealing emself, which directly led to em getting recruited, and things were hazy for a long time after that.

arin: has a history of Messy relationships, and has cheated and been cheated on. the worst betrayal they've experienced is the time when not only was their work stolen, but they were also framed for fraud. the fraud part got cleared up, but their reputation never fully recovered, and a lot of doors remain closed.

tess: a relative became her guardian/conservator after she lost her parents, and turns out, had ulterior motives. she's working on turning the game right back on them.

sam: there's been a few people that have turned out to be abusers or moles or swindlers in her circles. she never intentionally goes back on her word. 

leskel: has bit of a habit of using people. to put it mildly. 

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

kimon: peace. to get Fate off his ass and live a nice boring life. openly talks about the latter part. mostly his plan is to Not Do things that would drag him into Situations and have him deal with bullshit. he’s willing to take some extreme measures and make big moves, like he already has escaped a necromancer cult and defected from the armed forces of a dictatorship run by mind controllers.

vaal: struggles to express any kind of desire and does not feel allowed to pursue them. e doesn't fully know what e wants, but… maybe to continue seeing new skies. 

arin: recognition. it's hard not to hear them speak about it. they say they want fame and riches, but it's more about proving their worth and being valued and respected. academically, of course, it's not like they want their family's approval, don't get any ideas!!  they are often tempted to cheat, but also hate cheaters with a burning passion, so honest hard work it is! they used to be willing to risk life and limb, but they're starting to run a bit low on those.

tess: justice. she's open about it on a general level, when talking about politics and such. she's hiding the more personal side, because she's on a revenge quest. happens that she's also wrestling with the question of what would she be willing to do to reach her goal?

sam: unity, as in community but also unionization. everyone should join a union. the refinery becoming worker owned was great, but let's keep going. she wants everyone thriving, she doesn't want any more heartbreak, and has the dedication and disciple to put in the countless thankless hours of work to achieve that.

leskel: ascension. he will do anything to achieve it. extremely secretive.

nightmare: What does your OC have nightmares about? How do they deal with their nightmares? Do they tell people, or keep it to themself?

kimon: he doesn't speak about it, but has a recurring nightmare. he has essentially tamed it. it's supposed to be a prophetic “Come Defeat Thine Adversary O Chosen One” deal but he just sits down and meditates in the hell cave until the dream runs out. sometimes, on more lucid occasions, he’s able to talk with it.

vaal: having a fun time only to suddenly realize e has done something terrible to eir loved ones. e doesn't like talking about eir nightmares other than to state e had one. thankfully e dreams very rarely to begin with, because e does not handle the nightmare well. it's either frightening repression or clingy bedbug mode for the day. 

arin: their nightmares are mild, more like stress dreams. they complain about them loudly to anyone who's willing to listen, and go on ignoring the fact that they're a sign they need to practice some self care. their most intense nightmares feature a great monster hunting them, usually in labyrinthine basements or attics. 

tess: had violent night terrors as a child. still suffers from night paralysis. she talks about it pretty freely. most of the time it's classic hat man or teeth falling out shit. sometimes being pinned down is a feature, and she's a bit more unwilling to get detailed about those.

sam: sorrowful dreams that she wakes up from crying. taking some time to grieve again for a moment, and doing something comforting like drink a cup of tea helps. she talks about them with trusted friends, but usually only when asked. the hardest one is where she's present for an event she actually had learned about way after the fact. that nightmare is the only time she's afraid of heights.

kimon sleeps very lightly, wakes up a lot during the night, and p much always wakes up earlier than he'd want. part of it is his hypervigilance. another part is his whole physiological situation re: having animated himself and technically being undead. his power nap game is unreal tho, and he has fallen asleep standing up with his eyes open more than once.

vaal can go without sleep way longer than humans can, but e purposefully sleeps every night. e curls up in the middle of so many pillows and blankets and hot water bottles. sleeping for a long time leaves em kinda cold and stiff, and then it takes a while for em to warm up and wake up.

arin has a really regular sleep schedule despite the whole chaotic inventor thing. they get cranky if they can't do their whole sleepy time routine. a big part of it is about just. dealing with their prosthetics and other supportive magic shit. can't sleep comfortably with them on and running. sleeps on their back, sleep mask on.

sam can fall asleep anywhere, and often crashes right to bed when she finally gets home. she sleeps pretty well, but often doesn't have time to sleep quite enough. doesn't dream, or at least couldn't tell you a single time she did. prefers to sleep naked.

tess has a hard time falling asleep, both because she often gets absorbed in something around bedtime, and because it's hard for her to turn off her brain and fall asleep once in bed. this leads to lots of reading in bed. their bed is a princess four-poster deal. i don't know if body pillows are a thing in the setting, but she def hugs something when she sleeps.