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May. 20th, 2021 07:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carrionmywaywardsunPlayer name: Cheshire
Over 18?: Y
Contact: ivoryandhorn @ plurk/gmail, ivoryandhorn#9758
Character name: Crow that Heralds the Red Rain
Character canon: OC (Exalted)
Canon Summary: Crow was born as Diligent Sparrow in a city-state called Zhanglam, one of many small city-states that made up a region called the Hundred Kingdoms, which existed under the aegis of the powerful Blessed Isles. He came from a prosperous merchant family and his parents expected their children to contribute to the family's business, the family's social climbing aspirations, or both. While Sparrow's elder brother and younger sister fulfilled these expectations ably, Sparrow himself was the odd one out and considered the family disappointment. He was laidback and unambitious, had no skills that his parents considered useful, and was largely content to work in the family store and take life as it came.
Things took a turn for the worse when Sparrow's father suddenly ran off with his mistress, taking a large chunk of the family savings with him. Even worse, his father's departure revealed that the family business was doing much worse than he'd let on. Sparrow's family was abruptly plunged into dire financial straits, and the stress of this put a significant strain on his relationships with his entire family.
When war began to loom for Zhanglam, Sparrow's brother pushed him into the army. His brother still thought of Sparrow as the family slacker, regardless of his actual actions, and thought pushing Sparrow into the army would force him to grow up and contribute properly to the family. Despite his objections to his brother's high-handed ways, Sparrow ultimately went along with the plan. However, his attempts to lay low in the army until the conflict was over were stymied by his unexpected promotion to lieutenant, a position he was not suited for and didn't want. He muddled along as best he could, but while on a scouting mission, he and the soldiers he led walked into an ambush and were slaughtered in a hail of arrows.
This was not the end for Sparrow, though. The army that had ambushed him was led by a Deathlord, the Walker in Darkness. He had with him a spark of exaltation, intending to empower someone else with the corrupted remnant of a noble warrior from a past age. The spark itself had different ideas and exalted the dying Sparrow instead. With his first choice now unavailable, the Walker offered to take Sparrow into his army instead of killing him to reclaim the spark, and Sparrow accepted.
He was reborn as Crow that Heralds the Red Rain, a Day Caste Death Knight, and trained as an assassin for the Walker's army. He settled quickly into his new life, finding purpose and a new zest for living in his role as a dealer of death. Working with the rest of Walker's forces (one of whom was Shrike), he assassinated key figures, helping destabilize kingdoms and city-states, softening them for the wars that would bring them into the Walker's fold—and with war breaking out in earnest all over the Blessed Isles, there's plenty of work for him and his knives.
Character in Canon: Pre-exaltation, Crow was a laid back and unambitious person by nature. He preferred to focus on living a leisurely and entertaining life, taking life as it came rather than planning or strategizing for the future. This is the core of his personality, and it endured even after he became a Death Knight, even while the process of being a Death Knight changed him in other ways.
In life, however, his personality put him in an uncomfortable position within his highly ambitious family. His parents put pressure on all their children to take up pursuits that would further their wealth or social standing, but Crow was happy to work a low-paying job in the family store and use his free time to pursue hobbies and socialize. The pressure to do more, apply himself, and be more useful resulted in him being designated the family slacker and disappointment.
As Crow felt like the situation couldn't be changed--he wasn't willing to walk away from his family, and he couldn't change himself to fulfill their expectations--he accepted the situation was what it was. What he did change was his reaction. Rather than express or deal with the frustration and hurt engendered by his family's attitude, Crow shoved all those negative emotions aside and papered it over, essentially convincing himself that he wasn't really affected by their attitude and was actually completely fine. This would become the guiding principle for Crow dealing with difficult or personally hurtful situations. Rather than acknowledge his unhappiness (or anger, or fear, or anything else), Crow simply accepted the conditions that made him unhappy as something that can't be changed, and instead hammered at his emotional response until he could convince himself that it was all water off a duck's back and that he was in fact completely fine.
This tendency, combined with his generally easy going and friendly personality, made Crow a hard person to perturb. No matter what happened, he seemed to let it all slide off him and nothing really shook his laid back air. To some people, this made him a steady and calm presence to have around. To others, it made him seem like a joker who never took anything seriously. Either way, this was more or less an accurate reflection of his personality; if he outwardly appeared to be fine, it was either because he really was fine or because he was constantly persuading himself that he was actually fine, regardless of his real feelings.
When Crow's father abandoned his family, the relationships between Crow and his family, especially his brother, rapidly deteriorated. Prior to that, Crow's relationships with his family had sometimes been tense, but overall had no major issues. After Crow's father left, Crow's behavior came under even harsher scrutiny due to the increased stress his family was under, which, when combined with his elder brother's inability to see him as anything other than the family disappointment, led to constant arguments and scoldings. If Crow ever hit the point of being frustrated enough to push back against his brother's nitpicking and scolding, his brother would pull the I am Head of Household Now, Do Not Talk Back to Me card to cut off any argument, which soured Crow considerably toward authority figures. He was deeply unhappy and greatly resented his family for the fact that nothing he did was ever good enough because it wasn't what they wanted from him--and he felt deeply guilty over that resentment, because he had chosen to stay with them, and didn't feel like he had the right to be mad at them for treating him the way he knew they would.
Being pushed into the army only deepened Crow's profound and unacknowledged unhappiness. His brother had left him with a strong distaste for authority figures, and he struggled to adapt to the expectations of obedience to authority in the army. The general training and being expected to kill was also something he struggled with; as he came from a merchant family, he didn't have the same preparation for the idea that someone from a military family might have. He also struggled with the fact that, when it came down to it, he actually turned out to be pretty good at shutting off his moral objections and getting the job done on command, which was pretty personally perturbing.
His promotion to lieutenant only made matters worse. He was not a natural leader and his distaste for and bad experiences with authority figures made it hard for him to accept that he was an authority figure now himself. Being forced into the position while inexperienced, mainly due to (in his mind) the army's commanders fucking up and getting the previous cohort of lieutenants killed, embittered him deeply toward his commanders, especially when the war took a turn for the worse for Zhanglam. He felt like he and the people he led had been set up to die in unwinnable battles, something only borne out by his death. Worst of all, this period of time was the first time he really received any praise from his family, because his promotion to lieutenant was good for their social standing: suddenly, he was useful. This deepened his resentment (and with it, guilt) toward his family, while also trashing his self-esteem. He felt keenly that his happiness was immaterial and that his only value to his family was this business of engaging in war, which he desperately didn't want and didn't want to be successful at.
Death and resurrection as a Death Knight exacerbated his worst character traits and strongly reinforced his sole coping mechanism of pretending that his unhappiness doesn't exist and everything is fine. Since Crow had accepted the Walker's offer, he felt like he had no choice but to live with the results. Everything he had felt up to that point about not being good enough, and only having worth to his family when they could take advantage of him, even when he was deeply unhappy, sort of crystallized around accepting his new state as a Death Knight--and that he was completely fine with that, regardless of how he might really find that state to be.
This mindset was reinforced by the state of being a Death Knight in a number of ways. Exalting messed with his memories, muting his emotional connection to the events, which lifted the burden of his profound unhappiness and resentment/guilt spirals. (The feelings aren't gone, just harder for him to access unless he really tries or is strongly provoked.) Capitulating to the Walker's designs for him as a weapon also gave Crow a clarity of identity and purpose that he had never had in life, which also felt good, or at least gave him a satisfaction that he hadn't had before, even if he wasn't necessarily happy with what the purpose was. All of these things heavily reinforced his existing tendency to paper over his own unhappiness or discontentment with a veneer of thisisfine.jpg, pushing him to embrace being a Death Knight even more fully. Being genuinely happy is something he considers an immaterial concern, because he primarily views himself as a knife for the Walker now, and knives don't care about being happy, just about being good at being a knife.
As a Death Knight, Crow is extremely casual about killing. A lot of his bitterness about the war and over his death leaked out in the form of him embracing the idea that death is inevitable and inescapable, and if you take the really long view, that means everyone is just a dead person walking. So really, the way someone actually dies is immaterial, and so is any reason for killing another person. Death is death. As such, Crow does genuinely believe in the principle of "cool motive, still murder"--it's just that his takeaway is missing the key component of "and murder is bad, actually."
This embrace of death as inevitable, combined with his existing tendencies to live in the moment over looking at the big picture, amplified his reckless and impulsive tendencies. Even more so than when he was alive, Crow's decision-making is primarily motivated by the short-term return on entertainment in taking any given action. As such, he can be rather whimsical and unpredictable, because while he could theoretically do many things, whether he actually will is highly context dependent; at any given time, he'll do whatever he thinks is most entertaining, unless he's on a job or otherwise highly motivated to keep a long-term goal or plan in mind. Mostly, he'd rather fuck around and find out. He's really good at reacting and adapting in the moment--but less good at advance planning to keep himself out of situations that require him to react and adapt in the moment in the first place.
Despite his impulsive and murder-happy nature, Crow is relatively laid back as Death Knights go. He has no problem with casually killing people for the vine or out of annoyance or as a job, but he's still not particularly ambitious about destroying the world. It's all going to happen one day, you know? Everything's going to end eventually. As such, while Crow doesn't particularly seek out his own death, he doesn't particularly avoid it, either. He is a knife now (and he's fine with that! really!) and knives are made to be used and thrown away when they are useless. He's aware that his dangerous lifestyle and impulsive nature mean he has a short life expectancy, even if he is theoretically immortal as a Death Knight. Who cares: live fast, die young (again), leave a bunch of corpses.
Over 18?: Y
Contact: ivoryandhorn @ plurk/gmail, ivoryandhorn#9758
Character name: Crow that Heralds the Red Rain
Character canon: OC (Exalted)
Canon Summary: Crow was born as Diligent Sparrow in a city-state called Zhanglam, one of many small city-states that made up a region called the Hundred Kingdoms, which existed under the aegis of the powerful Blessed Isles. He came from a prosperous merchant family and his parents expected their children to contribute to the family's business, the family's social climbing aspirations, or both. While Sparrow's elder brother and younger sister fulfilled these expectations ably, Sparrow himself was the odd one out and considered the family disappointment. He was laidback and unambitious, had no skills that his parents considered useful, and was largely content to work in the family store and take life as it came.
Things took a turn for the worse when Sparrow's father suddenly ran off with his mistress, taking a large chunk of the family savings with him. Even worse, his father's departure revealed that the family business was doing much worse than he'd let on. Sparrow's family was abruptly plunged into dire financial straits, and the stress of this put a significant strain on his relationships with his entire family.
When war began to loom for Zhanglam, Sparrow's brother pushed him into the army. His brother still thought of Sparrow as the family slacker, regardless of his actual actions, and thought pushing Sparrow into the army would force him to grow up and contribute properly to the family. Despite his objections to his brother's high-handed ways, Sparrow ultimately went along with the plan. However, his attempts to lay low in the army until the conflict was over were stymied by his unexpected promotion to lieutenant, a position he was not suited for and didn't want. He muddled along as best he could, but while on a scouting mission, he and the soldiers he led walked into an ambush and were slaughtered in a hail of arrows.
This was not the end for Sparrow, though. The army that had ambushed him was led by a Deathlord, the Walker in Darkness. He had with him a spark of exaltation, intending to empower someone else with the corrupted remnant of a noble warrior from a past age. The spark itself had different ideas and exalted the dying Sparrow instead. With his first choice now unavailable, the Walker offered to take Sparrow into his army instead of killing him to reclaim the spark, and Sparrow accepted.
He was reborn as Crow that Heralds the Red Rain, a Day Caste Death Knight, and trained as an assassin for the Walker's army. He settled quickly into his new life, finding purpose and a new zest for living in his role as a dealer of death. Working with the rest of Walker's forces (one of whom was Shrike), he assassinated key figures, helping destabilize kingdoms and city-states, softening them for the wars that would bring them into the Walker's fold—and with war breaking out in earnest all over the Blessed Isles, there's plenty of work for him and his knives.
Character in Canon: Pre-exaltation, Crow was a laid back and unambitious person by nature. He preferred to focus on living a leisurely and entertaining life, taking life as it came rather than planning or strategizing for the future. This is the core of his personality, and it endured even after he became a Death Knight, even while the process of being a Death Knight changed him in other ways.
In life, however, his personality put him in an uncomfortable position within his highly ambitious family. His parents put pressure on all their children to take up pursuits that would further their wealth or social standing, but Crow was happy to work a low-paying job in the family store and use his free time to pursue hobbies and socialize. The pressure to do more, apply himself, and be more useful resulted in him being designated the family slacker and disappointment.
As Crow felt like the situation couldn't be changed--he wasn't willing to walk away from his family, and he couldn't change himself to fulfill their expectations--he accepted the situation was what it was. What he did change was his reaction. Rather than express or deal with the frustration and hurt engendered by his family's attitude, Crow shoved all those negative emotions aside and papered it over, essentially convincing himself that he wasn't really affected by their attitude and was actually completely fine. This would become the guiding principle for Crow dealing with difficult or personally hurtful situations. Rather than acknowledge his unhappiness (or anger, or fear, or anything else), Crow simply accepted the conditions that made him unhappy as something that can't be changed, and instead hammered at his emotional response until he could convince himself that it was all water off a duck's back and that he was in fact completely fine.
This tendency, combined with his generally easy going and friendly personality, made Crow a hard person to perturb. No matter what happened, he seemed to let it all slide off him and nothing really shook his laid back air. To some people, this made him a steady and calm presence to have around. To others, it made him seem like a joker who never took anything seriously. Either way, this was more or less an accurate reflection of his personality; if he outwardly appeared to be fine, it was either because he really was fine or because he was constantly persuading himself that he was actually fine, regardless of his real feelings.
When Crow's father abandoned his family, the relationships between Crow and his family, especially his brother, rapidly deteriorated. Prior to that, Crow's relationships with his family had sometimes been tense, but overall had no major issues. After Crow's father left, Crow's behavior came under even harsher scrutiny due to the increased stress his family was under, which, when combined with his elder brother's inability to see him as anything other than the family disappointment, led to constant arguments and scoldings. If Crow ever hit the point of being frustrated enough to push back against his brother's nitpicking and scolding, his brother would pull the I am Head of Household Now, Do Not Talk Back to Me card to cut off any argument, which soured Crow considerably toward authority figures. He was deeply unhappy and greatly resented his family for the fact that nothing he did was ever good enough because it wasn't what they wanted from him--and he felt deeply guilty over that resentment, because he had chosen to stay with them, and didn't feel like he had the right to be mad at them for treating him the way he knew they would.
Being pushed into the army only deepened Crow's profound and unacknowledged unhappiness. His brother had left him with a strong distaste for authority figures, and he struggled to adapt to the expectations of obedience to authority in the army. The general training and being expected to kill was also something he struggled with; as he came from a merchant family, he didn't have the same preparation for the idea that someone from a military family might have. He also struggled with the fact that, when it came down to it, he actually turned out to be pretty good at shutting off his moral objections and getting the job done on command, which was pretty personally perturbing.
His promotion to lieutenant only made matters worse. He was not a natural leader and his distaste for and bad experiences with authority figures made it hard for him to accept that he was an authority figure now himself. Being forced into the position while inexperienced, mainly due to (in his mind) the army's commanders fucking up and getting the previous cohort of lieutenants killed, embittered him deeply toward his commanders, especially when the war took a turn for the worse for Zhanglam. He felt like he and the people he led had been set up to die in unwinnable battles, something only borne out by his death. Worst of all, this period of time was the first time he really received any praise from his family, because his promotion to lieutenant was good for their social standing: suddenly, he was useful. This deepened his resentment (and with it, guilt) toward his family, while also trashing his self-esteem. He felt keenly that his happiness was immaterial and that his only value to his family was this business of engaging in war, which he desperately didn't want and didn't want to be successful at.
Death and resurrection as a Death Knight exacerbated his worst character traits and strongly reinforced his sole coping mechanism of pretending that his unhappiness doesn't exist and everything is fine. Since Crow had accepted the Walker's offer, he felt like he had no choice but to live with the results. Everything he had felt up to that point about not being good enough, and only having worth to his family when they could take advantage of him, even when he was deeply unhappy, sort of crystallized around accepting his new state as a Death Knight--and that he was completely fine with that, regardless of how he might really find that state to be.
This mindset was reinforced by the state of being a Death Knight in a number of ways. Exalting messed with his memories, muting his emotional connection to the events, which lifted the burden of his profound unhappiness and resentment/guilt spirals. (The feelings aren't gone, just harder for him to access unless he really tries or is strongly provoked.) Capitulating to the Walker's designs for him as a weapon also gave Crow a clarity of identity and purpose that he had never had in life, which also felt good, or at least gave him a satisfaction that he hadn't had before, even if he wasn't necessarily happy with what the purpose was. All of these things heavily reinforced his existing tendency to paper over his own unhappiness or discontentment with a veneer of thisisfine.jpg, pushing him to embrace being a Death Knight even more fully. Being genuinely happy is something he considers an immaterial concern, because he primarily views himself as a knife for the Walker now, and knives don't care about being happy, just about being good at being a knife.
As a Death Knight, Crow is extremely casual about killing. A lot of his bitterness about the war and over his death leaked out in the form of him embracing the idea that death is inevitable and inescapable, and if you take the really long view, that means everyone is just a dead person walking. So really, the way someone actually dies is immaterial, and so is any reason for killing another person. Death is death. As such, Crow does genuinely believe in the principle of "cool motive, still murder"--it's just that his takeaway is missing the key component of "and murder is bad, actually."
This embrace of death as inevitable, combined with his existing tendencies to live in the moment over looking at the big picture, amplified his reckless and impulsive tendencies. Even more so than when he was alive, Crow's decision-making is primarily motivated by the short-term return on entertainment in taking any given action. As such, he can be rather whimsical and unpredictable, because while he could theoretically do many things, whether he actually will is highly context dependent; at any given time, he'll do whatever he thinks is most entertaining, unless he's on a job or otherwise highly motivated to keep a long-term goal or plan in mind. Mostly, he'd rather fuck around and find out. He's really good at reacting and adapting in the moment--but less good at advance planning to keep himself out of situations that require him to react and adapt in the moment in the first place.
Despite his impulsive and murder-happy nature, Crow is relatively laid back as Death Knights go. He has no problem with casually killing people for the vine or out of annoyance or as a job, but he's still not particularly ambitious about destroying the world. It's all going to happen one day, you know? Everything's going to end eventually. As such, while Crow doesn't particularly seek out his own death, he doesn't particularly avoid it, either. He is a knife now (and he's fine with that! really!) and knives are made to be used and thrown away when they are useless. He's aware that his dangerous lifestyle and impulsive nature mean he has a short life expectancy, even if he is theoretically immortal as a Death Knight. Who cares: live fast, die young (again), leave a bunch of corpses.
