1. Floran Bailey

    Floran Bailey Member

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    How believable is she? How can I improve her character?

    Discussion in 'Character Development' started by Floran Bailey, Aug 22, 2018.

    Name: Tessa Maltov


    Age: 30


    Gender: Female


    Species: Homo azulensis


    Common name: Azulian


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    Occupation: Lawyer, Confidential Informant. Works for the equivalent of the NSA/FBI, is secretly a black ops agent. The political climate is somewhat equivalent to the cold war. The government of the southern union is newly federalized and are only recently able to track crimes across multiple towns and districts and only have about 2 years of post-war crime statistics. It's Tessa's job to direct sting/assassination operations to take down organized crime syndicates and Avolan terrorist groups. Specializes in Azulian and weapons trafficking.


    She and her partner hunt down people involved in the criminal elements of Taba's cult as well as serial killers and rapists that would otherwise escape prosecution. (Often the second two overlap with the first category.) Enough people fitting that description have disappeared for the urban legend of 'The Janitor' to develop, with most people assuming The Janitor to be Phiede (their god of death and justice) incarnate, explaining the Janitors apparent ability to be in two places at once. The government doesn't particularly want to catch 'The Janitor' and puts about as much effort into investigating ‘her’ as the American government put into investigating Los Pepes. In that there's some evidence to suggest that they help each other out.

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    History: Claims to have been born in the country of Avolon to a high ranking member of Taba's church (Taba is Avolon's tyrannical despot) and to have worked her way up their ranks with the intent of sabotaging their criminal operations and assassinating Taba. Failed in the assassination attempt but succeeded in crippling their primary trafficking line out of the North.


    Is actually Taba's daughter but the rest of her story is accurate. Wants nothing more than to kill her mother and get vengeance for all the people she hurt and all the lives she destroyed. Used to be completely consumed by hate and rage at what Taba did to her and everyone around her. Is now attempting to distance herself from everything related to her homeland so that she doesn't kill herself and so that she has the opportunity to actually live and be happy.


    Religious Beliefs: Extremely atheistic. Thinks that any god that would allow Taba to do the things she did would be morally repugnant and unworthy of anything other than complete and total condemnation. Also thinks that religions as a whole are purely a means of controlling people and overriding their natural inhibition towards harming others. Thinks that all gods were made up by people like her mother.


    Personality: Comes off as quiet and reserved in public but behaves like a giggly dork around her friends. Tends to be very cynical and sardonic when planning things in a work/mission environment but will switch to being childishly optimistic and naive when discussing anything about her personal life.


    The reason for this division is that when she doesn't feel safe the programming from Taba's cult takes over and she limits her self-expression and stops herself from doing things she likes. It's not a conscious thing but her paranoia that Taba has spies planted in the people surrounding her scares her enough that she 'behaves' whenever she thinks she's being watched. It's entirely non-rational and results in her bottling up a lot of her positive emotions and only expressing them around her family who she knows she can trust.

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    Doesn't think she deserves love or affection and is generally very self-conscious about her physical appearance and hates how much she looks like her mother. Hates that half of her genetic code and thinks that she's tainted by it. Thinks that she owes Nigel something for showing her affection and has trouble believing that he genuinely loves her. Is deathly afraid of hurting him in some way and becoming exactly like her mother.


    Suffers from C-PTSD and has three general reactions to triggers.


    1. Freezes up and completely shuts down mentally.

    2. Terminates all threats (real or perceived) as quickly and efficiently as possible.

    3. Loses her sense of place and hallucinates past events.


    Her potential triggers are cathedrals, loud unexpected noises, restraints of any kind, certain kinds of knives, dark dank spaces and cramped rooms with concrete walls and floors, especially if they're cluttered or dirty.


    This causes her to behave and think in two completely different ways depending on if she's associated something with her family or her homeland. It's a bit like DID in that she shifts personalities but unlike it in that she's fully aware of it, doesn't dissociate and remembers everything.


    Also, while she's aware of it she doesn't have control over it and in the actual story her partner gives her what are essentially cognitive behavioral/processing therapy assignments to try and help curb her maladaptive survival mechanisms. This would be a form of malpractice IRL (since her partner is licensed as psychiatrist) however they don't have socialized healthcare and are in an economic depression so it's the best they can do.


    She abhors the act of violence and abuse against anyone and will even go so far as to dig up and replant weeds that grow in her garden. But, in cases where she thinks it will stop more violence from being committed she's willing to perpetrate it for 'the greater good.' It makes her feel disgusting and she hates herself for it but she's ultimately a utilitarian and will do whatever she thinks will cause a net increase in people's quality of life regardless of how it affects her personally. She doesn't think how it affects her matters and would previously go to nigh-suicidal lengths to try and stop what happened to her and the people she grew up with from happening to anyone else. It took her getting out of Avolon and developing a friend group for her to figure out that she as an individual mattered. Her relationship with Nigel helped her realize that she could be likable and could have a positive influence on someone despite her seeing herself as disgusting and evil as she’s able to see how her actions affect him on a day to day basis and know for sure that he’s happier when she spends time with him.


    She thinks that because she was abused it turned her into a psychopath and that's the reason seeing people be mistreated makes her blood boil. Which is wrong because she has that reaction out of empathy for the person being hurt. Narratively she's supposed to be the opposite of a psychopath in that her actions are motivated by empathy but because violence is never associated with empathy she doesn’t make the connection and thinks that her being capable of violence means that they made her the same as them which is not a healthy mindset to have. She knows that Nigel would be mad at her for thinking that way but has convinced herself of it and will avoid talking about it because she doesn’t want to get a negative reaction from him. Either in the form of him getting upset and telling her it’s a load of crap or him believing her, taking her children away and leaving her. The degree to which she believes this depends on how depressed she is at the time. Ranging from amusement at the irony of it to guilt and self-hatred.



    She will not hesitate to kill or maim if she thinks she's about to die and behaves very animalistically when pushed into fight or flight mode. Will calm down if her partner is there to comfort her but will otherwise resort to substance abuse after or during a panic attack.

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    Gets physically ill when she has to watch or hear accounts of abuse and doesn't see the people that commit such offenses Azulian.


    Even when she's out having fun with her family she never looks completely at ease and will only ever completely relax when she's alone with Nigel or their children. She tends to be very affectionate and emotionally expressive around people she trusts and wants nothing more out of life than to be happy.


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    She divides her life into trust and distrust and tends towards behavioral extremes on both ends. She trusts her partner and their children completely and totally to such a naive degree that it negatively impacts her parenting. She always tries to exhibit positive emotions around them and her go to response to seeing them in distress is to either smother them with affection or to try and make them laugh at something and is obnoxiously optimistic about everything related to them.

    [​IMG]

    Having a child helped her in that she was able to know once and for all that she isn’t like her mother, as she feels extremely protective of her daughter and is unable to wrap her head around the concept of trying to hurt her in any way.


    Around unknown people her level of distrust is similarly extreme and borders on diagnosable paranoia. Behaviorally she's very reserved and quiet, thinking that if she keeps her head down her life with her family will be safe and she only ever steps out of her role as a operative, lawyer and CI when she sees something she views as morally reprehensible.


    She very rarely displays anger and due to her stature and usually subdued pacifist behavior the switch is downright terrifying. Especially since she never lets you know she's mad until she's ready to murk someone. Most people can tell just from looking at her that she isn't someone you want to mess with but her normal behavior is so contrary to this initial impression that it's easy to overlook her physical appearance.


    Physical Appearance: She's tall, stocky, carries herself like she's always ready for a fight and has a slight limp in her left leg. On the whole the way she looks fits her personality in that everything about her advertises physical strength and maternal instincts in equal doses. She looks like a mom and like someone who could crush a skull in her fist at the same time.


    Family: She has a two year old daughter with her partner Nigel, a 16 year old stepson and a 14 year old adopted daughter who is the only child of her dead childhood friend Marcy.

    [​IMG]

    Other: Always wears a long sleeved turtleneck shirts and pants. Will not wear anything that allows you to see anything past her wrists, face and ankles. Avoids pool parties and beach activities as a result. On the rare occasion that she does swim she wears a full body wetsuit. Sometimes if she turns her head too far to the right lines of scar tissue can be seen going down the back of her neck. These scars cover the rest of her body and are the result of her being tortured and used as a Turin (essentially an Azulian sacrifice/religious scapegoat) by her mother when she was a child. No one except Nigel and her obstetrician know that she was a Turin.


    The only exception to this is when she exposes herself as a sort of intimidation tactic whenever she goes after people who knew about or had involvement with the creation of Turins as it's extremely alarming to see one that survived to adulthood and since the point of them is that they're perfect sacrifices because they're 'pure' (having never experienced any kind of pleasure, to the point that they're given bad food, scratchy clothes and not allowed outside the city walls lest they see a pretty flower and appreciate it) having her show up with her basically-spouse is pretty much the ultimate fuck you. Especially since Taba's cult likes to scare people away from Turins by saying that if they like talking to you, if they like anything, every person whose sins had been forgiven through them will be reincarnated as maggots and then eaten by birds so the thought of being killed by an impure Turin creates an extreme sense of existential dread because if that doesn't damn you to a hellish afterlife nothing will. It is unwise on her part as one could escape and then identify her if they were ever in the southern union but she kind of doesn't care because she finds terrifying them funny as hell but will only do it when it's just her and Nigel on a OP.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2018
  2. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    That's a lot of detail for a character. But for like-ability you need a story. There's a lot to work with there. Take what you have, start writing the story if you haven't already. That's where the reader's attraction/empathy to a character comes from.
     
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  3. Floran Bailey

    Floran Bailey Member

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    She's part of an animated series I'm working on. I'll probably post the script in the workshop after I finish critiquing other people's stuff. I'm mostly concerned with whether or not she seems well rounded and realistic enough given the information above.
     
  4. Alan Aspie

    Alan Aspie Banned Contributor

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    Ask yourself:

    Is this character psychologically credible in that story and that storyworld. The answer tells you if she is realistic enough.

    With psychological credibility these are important:
    - Motivation and it's base.
    - Moral orders. (Check the meaning of this term if necessary. It is specific term in social psychology and does not mean what it sounds.)
    - Socio-emotional space/environment.
    - Continuity vs. growth.
    - Anomalies must have good reasons.
     
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  5. cosmic lights

    cosmic lights Contributor Contributor

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    What are her fears? (I don't think you mentioned those as there was a lot of information on this character)
     
  6. Floran Bailey

    Floran Bailey Member

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    Fear of abandonment.
    Fear of hurting her family.
    Fear of becoming like the people she kills.
    Fear of death/loss.
    Fear of churches and religious iconography.
    Fear of being found out and targeted by Taba and people from Avolon in general.
    She also has a bunch of aversions and paranoias but that isn't necessarily the same as fear.
     
  7. Azuresun

    Azuresun Senior Member

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    Reading this, my problem is that it feels like there's too much bad stuff in her background, not in the sense of it being terrible, but in the sense of it being laid on too thick. When an author is really heaping on the torment for a character (especially if most of that torment happened offscreen in their backstory), it feels like I'm being ordered to sympathise with them, since suffering automatically makes people sympathetic, right?

    Remember that angst and psychological damage can be hard to convey sympathetically to the audience. Yes, there are real people who have suffered equally bad things and we're likely to immediately sympathise with them, but a fictional character's problems will not carry as much weight because, well, they're not real, and a reader who feels like they're being beaten over the head with awful stuff can make it go away by simply closing the book.

    You can get around this by making them feel real to the audience, but that's all in the exectuion, and it's not something that can be conveyed simply by reading her bio. Remember the audience won't know any of the stuff that you've just told us, unless you infodump it all right at the start (not recommended), so you need to consider how much of this stuff will come up in the story, how it will be introduced, or how much insight the reader will have into why she's acting in a given way. So with that in mind, maybe consider these questions:

    1: What will she initially appear like when introduced?

    2: How will the traumatic past and psychological damage be introduced and worked into the story? How quickly will the audience find out about all of this stuff?

    3: How much will the negative or morally dubious aspects of who she is and what she does actually factor into the story? How will they threaten what she cares about, hurt people who don't deserve it, put her job on the line, etc?
     
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  8. cosmic lights

    cosmic lights Contributor Contributor

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    I would pick one of those fears to focus on and make sure you place it directly in the way of her goal but be careful not to over think her or feel you need to get all this information into the book in great detail. So she has fears but fears always come from somewhere. This is why I say pick one or two at the most to make the main focus and give her a reason behind those fears.
    Fear of becoming like the people she kills. - is the most interesting and less cliche. Everyone fears abandonment to some degree all death and loss.
    Her fear of religious things is the other I would choose.
    It's better to have fewer and really go into them, than several things you just touch upon


    Also, if you haven't all ready look at her character arc throughout each act. How she changes as a person.

    Otherwise I think you are doing a good job.
     

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