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+---- Thread: [RFC][dskswdyhms] Fixing Zeke (Pinging anyone who hated him before) (/showthread.php?tid=8204)
[RFC][dskswdyhms] Fixing Zeke (Pinging anyone who hated him before) - Black Aeronaut - 01-06-2011
Okay, so some of you guys hated Zeke as he was. That's fine, I can understand... but more importantly, I want to get better at this.
To that end, I picked up a trial version of a character building software to help me plug up the holes. Bear in mind, I'm not mindlessly following the templates, but a lot of the suggestions have been useful in both helping me to understand Zeke and to help make him into a more believable character.
At this time I am still working on tweaking things a bit, but I think I got enough groundwork down for everyone here to comment on.
Ezekiel Darkwood
Character Type 1: The Perfectionist - a principaled, moral person on a mission.
Sub-type: Withdrawn
General Personality:
Ezekiel is a very principled and self-disciplined person who strives for personal perfection. He holds himself and society up to strict ideals, seeing life in black and white. Ideas, people and actions are either right or wrong, good or evil. There's very little middle ground. To Ezekiel, the world is an unstable, even dangerous, place and it's up to him to stand up for what's right. Dirty Harry was this type. The withdrawn subtype tends to be detached from the world, an outsider on a mission, sometimes showing more affection and connection to non-humans, animals, art or automobiles. At times, he tends to be stiff, impatient and sarcastic, standing up for what he believes is right no matter who is on the other side: the police, the boss, God - doesn't matter. What's right is right.
Personality Flaw:
Ezekiel's character flaw is based on the incorrect belief that he and whatever situation he's involved with can be perfect if everyone acts correctly. He avoids making mistakes or losing self-control. During the story, he learns that perfection is impossible, that the world is forever unstable and that's okay.
Effects Under Pressure:
When he's under pressure, he gets angry, feeling misunderstood and alone. When he's relaxed and secure, he becomes less controlled by rules, living more in the moment, becoming more comfortable with letting life happen.
Background - Childhood:
Ezekiel's childhood can be defined in one word: unstable.
To begin with, Zeke was chosen before birth to be the Avatar of the Native-American trickster god, Raven. This is made visibly noticable by the vicious looking black tribal-style markings under his eyes - he was born with this feature and attempts to remove it were in vain. The only way to hide it is with prodigious use of concealing makeup.
Being the Avatar to a trickster-god naturally means that life is chaotic. Accidents happen frquently in Zeke's presence. Zeke never needs to go looking for trouble, it is attracted to him like flies to rotting meat. Bullies automatically sense his uniqueness and they single him out. But that was only the begining of his problems.
His father, being in the US Navy long before Zeke was born, was not always around, but what really made his life problematic was the horrific death of his mother - her lower-body was crushed in a high-speed collision with a drunk driver. Zeke, five years old at the time, was strapped into the back seat and witnessed his mother's agonizingly slow death. This traumatic event set the stage for a series of psychological issues such as PTSD, Nightmare Disorder, and Depressive Disorder.
Further tragedy struck when his father had a bad landing on a carrier in high-seas, throwing the family into a tail-spin.
While his father recovered, Zeke stayed with his Grandpa Bear. Also at his side was his childhood friend, Teletha Testarossa. While Grandpa Bear worked his ancient white magic to fix Zeke's shattered psyche, little Teletha kept him rooted in reality as she played with him, ate with him, and even bathed and slept at his side. However, the military spares little time for such things and eventually, Zeke had to move on with his father. While he would make trips to see his Grandpa Bear every summer, he was more or less alone.
Zeke learned early on that it was up to him to define right and wrong and act on those ideals to maintain some sort of internal balance. He aligned himself with the rules to contain his anxiety. Out of this environment, Zeke found stability in facts, not people. This gave him the appearance of an aloof, elitist, and iconoclastic individual. However, that is only a facade that hides the still-wounded child inside. With his closest friends and his family, Zeke is at ease. But with strangers he is careful, giving his trust tacitly and grudgingly.
Education:
Zeke, tending to be highly skeptical of those he does not trust, is mostly self-educated and is masterful at ferreting out missing information, or at the very least deducing it for himself. He has a very keen intellect and at the start of the story he is already subscribing to self-study courses in mechanical-, electrical-, and aeronautical-engineering.
Work:
At work, Ezekiel is honest and focused on the right way to get the job done. He wants co-workers to live up to his standards and is willing to help them achieve this. He’s attracted to causes and jobs that fix things.
Dialogue Style:
Ezekiel knows the way things ought to be and is willing to tell anyone his opinion. Since he's the withdrawn subtype, thus less relationship-oriented, he tends to lack tact - stepping on toes, offending others and failing to understand why others get upset (though not always concerned as half the time it is intentional). Because perfection is the prime concern, he speaks proper English. Facts are always more important than emotional attachment.
Dialogue examples:
"Listen to me, I know what's right."
"I am not angry!"
"I said I'd do it, so I did it."
"No matter how hard I try, it's never good enough."
"I'm not going to give up!"
Internal Dialogue:
"It's up to me to make things right."
"Nothing ever comes quickly enough."
Relationships:
Compared to most of the other characters, Zeke comes off as being the most sensible. In a relationship, he is very principaled and mature for his age, and his ethical nature and dependability are highly attractive traits.
Conversely he also tends to be the most abrasive personality, often approaching anti-hero qualities. This shrewd directness tends to effect his relationships adversely, but anyone that honestly takes time to understand him learns to take it somewhat in stride. The problem is having someone stick around long enough to do so - his mannerisms are at times misconstrued for coldness. The only way this really happens is when his abrasive nature becomes something of morbid fascination to another character and, whether they realize it or not, they find themselves trying to figure him out and, in turn, becoming attracted to him.
Summary:
Ezekiel exercises too much control over his feelings and this causes problems for himself and others. He must learn that giving in to his hidden chaotic nature is a critical key to his happiness in whatever situation he's involved in. Relaxing this control will allow him to start living life on its own terms. He learns that perfection is not necessary for stability or happiness, that what he has and who he is, is good enough after all.
- paladindythe - 01-07-2011
I like what you've done. The biggest whole is that his quotes (and merely being a protagonist to some extent) imply a Determinator aspect, but there's no real history supporting it. Why does Zeke refuse to give in, when things get tough? You imply that it's because of the high standards to which he holds himself. If that's the case, then you may want to draw up a personal code of ethics for him. If nothing else, he could base it off of Character Strength and Virtues. You can get a lot of mileage when he fails to meet his own standards. You also should play up his abrasiveness, it was seriously lacking in his conduct before. It needs to cost him something, at least temporarily.
- Necratoid - 01-07-2011
If things are changed up a bunch he did end up hanging out with the cast of 'Parker Lewis Can't Lose'... which means he does know convoluted plans can and do work if properly executed... in the old cannon he did apparently spend years working on a jacket of holding after one of those guys. If that happened at a time when he was particularly unstable, I can see him unconsciously striving for that level of control and his notably lower charisma score is preventing that. The lack of a constant adversary also means he just never gets a chance to learn the art of Xanotos Speed Chess... not that he stops trying.
I'm not sure if this bit will come across right for you, but make his coping mechanism for personal interaction (social skill spackle basically) rigged for dealing with Americans. Switching to dealing with the Japanese means he just acts odd... and after a while he'll adapt again. Till then he keeps throwing people off with how he acts. All proper on moment and then he jumps a youma (power cable and axe slaughter)... he just doesn't act in the way he expects. Which stems from his need to control the situation... which is why he does things. Its why he saves Rei's grandpa... he needs to do something about the situation, everyone else is too busy gawking at the train wreck TV moment before them. That someone did something like that on reflex is alien to them... I remember something about him getting yelled at for disquieting the herd and thanked for actually bothering.
Reminded me of that scene in the first episode/chapter of Gantz.... the main character gets offed because everyone is dithering rather than doing something. Spamming cell phone pictures doesn't count. Though now I have a different example for you. There is a movie verse Iron Man anime airing now. Watching Tony Stark acts like Tony Stark and how much he disorients and confuses them something fierce... he is just so alien to their mind set. They go off into conspiracy theory mode and generally have no clue what just happened.
- Black Aeronaut - 01-07-2011
Paladin: the other quote reflects something that I had not really touched on in this update - his incredible degree of stubborn determination that is part of his warrior heritage. Only Tohoin Ikuto really rivals him in this regard. I'll work on getting this squeezed in there later.
Necratoid: Correct about the Parker Lewis bit. Striving for the sort of perfection that Parker and his friends seemed to have would be something that can be revealed later in the story when we have just Kubiac and a couple others around talking about stuff... the subject of Zeke comes up and Kubiac grudgingly tells about his good friend and why he is even friends with someone who tends to be so abrasive.
And his seeming so odd to the Japanese... piece of cake. It's not difficult at all to be out of place in Japan. Zeke will have people giving him cross-eyed looks when he forgets to set his 'social localization' to Japanese. Hell, I've done it more than a few times myself.
- paladindythe - 01-09-2011
Who would have thought it? Tvtropes.org has a trope for this one too:Harmony Versus Discipline
- Black Aeronaut - 01-09-2011
paladindythe Wrote:Who would have thought it? Tvtropes.org has a trope for this one too:Harmony Versus DisciplineWe'll also have a few (maybe more than a few) Yin Yang Bombs flying around. (^_^)