Characters The OC Revolution | NEW! 2Q 2024 Challenge Is Up: Friendship

@divapilot, thank you for telling us about Breha and Blue. When you mentioned the former's life in service, I expected something Downton Abbey-esque. Well thought through situations for her uni' years. Her friends must have been really blatant about their reasons to befriend, for it to help push her into disconnection.

I'm not a girl, so there are certain female thought processes that I don't get. So me looking at Breha, people avoiding her for political reasons, I can see that as having a negative effect. For the other side of the coin, you say, "while others befriended her" - that is past tense, so the befriending process is complete, done already. You put up with a lot more **** from friends than mere acquaintances, so I don't see why it has a deleterous(sp?) effect.

Blue, I have a soft spot for this kind of character since the Sector General multi-species hospital stories by James White.
You don't mention what this polarising past is, that he has to conceal.

Also, can't he lie? Make up a past for the casual investigative patient. Eg. "I was raised by jawas. See that med droid? If I throw my hands up real fast and make a noise like an ion blaster, it'll drokkin' **** itself. Captain doesn't like me doing it. Disruptive, she says."

Hey, thanks for the interest! Great questions, very thought provoking.

Breha wanted to have social connections in college. However, being a Solo, she knows that there are sycophants who only are interested in her friendship so that they can name-drop her. That gets to her because she has lost someone very dear to her, her brother Anakin, and she doesn't need fake friends who don't really care about her feelings. The other thing is that the setting is just post-Vong invasion. Her mother Leia has been very political (chief of staff) and some of her decisions are by necessity unpopular. Breha has come up against people who write her off immediately because they associate her with her mother's politics. It got to a point where she could never really trust why people were being nice to her. What did they want from her? This made her feel even more isolated. She's already deeply hurt by her brother's death, and she wants real connections to people who are willing to look beyond her sadness and sense of loss. She would rather be alone than deal with someone whose motivations for being with her are inauthentic.

Blue has many demons that haunt him and that he keeps at arm's length. Not to give too much away, but he has had a difficult past and has gotten into serious trouble with the law. He doesn't advertise these issues because they will define how people think of him and how they treat him. He wants to put the past behind him.

Why doesn't he lie? Good question. He is deeply ethical, and he holds himself up to exacting standards. (He's really tough on himself.) This is mainly a reaction to an earlier time, predating True Blue, when he was very unethical and was a pretty unpleasant person. He looks back at his behavior and is ashamed of himself, and he wants to wipe the slate clean and start over. Part of starting over is getting your ethics in order. Blue actually comes out and says that he wasted too much time lying in the past and he won't lie anymore. He would rather tell people the ugly truth than make up a lie. (That doesn't mean he doesn't deflect conversations or tell only part of the truth.) The more he values and respects you, the more he reveals about himself. He would never, ever lie to Breha.

The bottom line with these two is that they are both struggling to achieve something that they can never get: a "normal" life.

 

Blue My guy, next to Yakooboo and Reis Azada.

Also, all this time I thought Sith-I-5 was a girl. Then again, most of the internet thinks I'm a dude...

 

Addendum:
There is no such thing as "female thinking process". These things are cultural expectations et cetera. What may help in case of Bree's upbringing would be knowing that her parents in the slightly-AU stories are Han and Leia. The OC Index Thread is helpful in such cases.

 

Oh, I see where I may have mis-interpreted.

If someone is no longer a friend, presumably because Breha broke it off, does not negate that they had earlier befriended her.

For bragging rights, apart from maybe bounty hunters, I could not see how going up to people and saying, shouting, or otherwise communicating, "I'm friends with Breha", posed a problem.

With the fuller explanation, it makes more sense.

 

I worked for Lush and there were both guys and girls and there are people who enjoy nice scents in general.

As for the earlier thing...hmmm, have you been closely related, living close or working for/with a celebrity of that calibre? It puts things in a different perspective.

 

Well now you're generalizing. I'm female and don't see the point of poutporrie. We aren't one hive mind.

Sent from my LG-D415 using Tapatalk

 

I'm female and I don't give a womp rat's rear-end about pretty shoes. My father, a macho type, adored shoes.

 

Oh, its got a smell, has it? It just seemed like soft debris.

My phone developed a problem with the last post when I tried to add an emoticon. Could not edit it.

 

Time for a new discussion after seeing those man and woman things above.
Tell us about some lie for good or bad your OC had to use.

 

Oh, where to begin with Doran... Doran Blayne isn't even his real name Domnic Jade, fugitive Jedi, disassembled his lightsaber and used the crystals to buy himself a new life as Doran. He told himself that he had given up on the Jedi order and that he stuck his neck out for no one, but aided a pair of fellow Jedi in escaping to the Corporate Sector. He's also secretly training Raissa Baiard, seemingly a dutiful Imperial Prefect, as his padawan.

Coincidentally, the tentative title for the next chapter in the saga of Doran and Raissa is "Some of My Lies Are True,". (which is the title of an obscure Huey Lewis song from his first album.....and I'll see my old self out now.)

 

Is the sequel of the sequel of the sequel titled "Yes, it's true, I'm so happy to be stuck with you"?

...

My characters lie a lot, but it's still a secret...plus, you all are yet to meet the one that lies most.

 

Can an assumed identity of a physically dead character count as a lie if they are going about certain activities among the living without necessarily revealing they are physically dead but spiritually transcendent to said characters (except one, but he is/was a Jedi and really needs to know the truth since he's going to be part of a large spiritual awakening and general universal agenda...s'up, Obi?)? Because that would fit the bill for one Sibylla Orien (who actually did possess the name during her first lifetime, but as an Intercessor uses the name minus the aristocratic title it originally came with...oh, and the physical appearance from her final lifetime).

 

So, basically, these people are like Force ghosts that don't appear...visibly dead?

 

Yeah, never mind, don't make no sense...but yes, they are Force ghosts who actually have the ability to assume a physically viable form for certain periods of time. (It's based on something that Lucas came up with for Obi and Yoda in the original screenplay for Return of the Jedi...Obi-Wan was supposed to appear and actually duel Vader at one point).

 

To me it makes sense and it's a pretty fun concept! Makes me think of Heather Nova's song Maybe An Angel and a lot of folklore where people are dead because we are told that they are, yet they're basically no different than the living ones. Heck, I would use this concept for an AU of my own future storyline, because it's a great idea.

 

Jake and Darra don't have a reason to lie to each other, and no one else to lie to for like ten years...as teens they told the usual little white lies about where they were going or whatever. The little community may have been generally wholesome and utopian but that doesn't mean the kids don't still sneak off to drink and party. After they're rescued they don't outright lie so much as simply refuse to disclose much about their past to pretty much anyone. They're very private people.

 

I created two OCs: Cazran and Cleonara. You can read more about them in my latest story Blush Response.

They're Mandalorians who deserted during the Battle of Dxun and went to pursue careers in bounty hunting.

Mod edit: Don't bait people.

 

Tell us about them! What's their backstory? Honestly, it's the best way to get to know these characters you're writing. Write the stuff about them that will never make the story. Their true selves will come through. And you don't write crap so stop putting yourself down.



leiamoody, I think that sounds fascinating. You have such a deft hand with OCs. I love the universe you've created for them.
Following off of Leiamoody's comments, I'm not sure if a deception is the same as a lie. What if the deception is to avoid telling a lie? Your character's predicament would probably freak people out, so maybe allowing people to believe what they want avoids a lot of problems.

With my guys, Bree pulled off (for the most part) a pretty major deception when she tricked her parents into thinking she was still at university when she had in fact ditched. They thought she was communicating from her dorm room when she wasn't even on the planet. As for Blue, he lied constantly when he was in college. He lied to his professors and he lied to his parents about his progress with his studies. He lied to get what he wanted (mainly spice) and he lied to himself when he didn't think he was hooked. As for deception, Blue did that too, from an early age, He hacked his mother's business accounts when he was a teen so that he could have his own supply of alcohol delivered to the house. She never realized the theft.

 

My commandeered OC, Mary Formal, lies for either survival, or for fun.

As an Arcateenian shapeshifter, she stayed in human form and concealed her alien origins during her two centuries on Earth, for fear of being dissected or whatever, and during her stint with the British government agency, E-Branch, in the 1990s, the Man From U.N.C.L.E. fan girl is having secret fun convincing a pair of her team-mates that had never heard of the show, that since E-Branch does not have the manpower or political clout to operate autonomously, the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement is a real-life partner agency, and that she is a liaison sent along to oversee E-Branch operations on the Australian continent.

Her E-Branch boss, Ben Trask, who normally does not give her the time of day, is inexplicably allowing her to maintain the ruse, but at the cost of making her write operation debrief reports in duplicate. One for him, one for her real employers.

If her team-mates ask, she is ready to clarify that she works in U.N.C.L.E.'s Section III: Enforcement and Intelligence.

In the Star Wars universe, she continues to pass for human, though at least one medical professional has rumbled her secret, and confronted her about it.

She also does not publicise that her feeding habit, well necessity, is to consume a single human heart, once a month.
When the Imperial Navy blockaded the Alliance not-very-Safe World of Flitter, with her on it, her group of survivors dwindled by one person a month, for a reason. No-one twigged.

 

This is totally off-topic and I apologize but my mind tends to wander when I'm at work.

So I was thinking about language and I realized that Jake and Darra likely became almost entirely nonverbal during their time alone after the attack. It was like ten years, just the two of them. And they could already read each other so well. By the time the recon team discovers them they can likely hold whole conversations in the tilt of their heads and twitch of their lips. And when they did speak aloud? It would probably be some sort of pidgin version of Basic that sprang up from childhood fun making up codes for talking in the company of others without them understanding clearly the topic under discussion to become practically its' own dialect. Of course now I need to come up with said pidgin phrasings and words so that I can write it accurately. lolz

 

For a recon team to find them, I would assume Jake and Darra were isolated somewhere?

Their pidgin phrases probably would not have to convey much that was particularly sophisticated, so you probably don't need to create any long phrases; just the basics.

You can also say they have five+ different words for [something, eg. snow], just with a twitch of the lips.

Me being me, though, I just got a vision of Darra getting a host of confused messages from Jake's face as he hops about after smashing his toes on the bed post.

Afterwards, they would put that kaliedoscope of expressions down as a kind of facial Blue Screen of Death, the red ring of doom on an X-Box, or my DOS fave, a non-recoverable disk error, and wait it out, maybe go run a towel under the cold tap in preparation for whatever befell their sibling(?).

 

Yeah, they were born on a colony planet on the outer rim, in a small community that split off from the main settlement due to ideological differences about living more symbiotically with the land and whatnot. And then the Vong kinda stumbled on them during their whole invasion and wiped basically everyone out. They're the only survivors from their settlement, if there were others from the larger one they were probably enslaved and shipped off elsewhere. But the team in question was a GA team put together to check out planets that haven't been heard from since before the war; look for survivors, check if the place is livable, if there's still a Vong presence, etc.

Yeah, I might base the verbal parts off some of the stuff in Trigedasleng from The 100 since that's really a sort of slurred-together English, which is fascinating. Honestly they could likely understand what the team says to them but have trouble responding in Basic after so long just the two of them and forming their own communications system.

Best friends actually, and kind of platonic soulmates. In earlier versions they were an actual couple but that just doesn't feel right anymore, even though they're not likely to ever find a partner outside of each other anyway. Codependence is their shared middle name. lolz

 

I am curious about this, because I still don't see where those three little stories fit in the big picture and there are a lot of things you tell us here. I would like to see a solid, 10-20 K backstory. This may be one of the reasons I think we have to be both writers and readers.