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aww yeah it's question meme time
Time to bring back one of my old faves...
Simple and easy! Here's how it goes:
1. POST a top-level with your character name
2. REPLY to other people's top-level with a question for that character
3. ANSWER the question you were asked
4. ASK a question of that person's characters in return!
We go back and forth like this asking questions in a thread until one or both of us runs out of questions!
QUESTIONS CAN BE ANYTHING. Serious or silly as you want! What does Jane think of (x)? What does Sarah have for breakfast? How many times a day does Alex masturbate? What's Tom's dream job? The only limit for questions is your imagination.
Replies can be as monosyllabic or as tl;dr are you want; it's up to you. Go wild kids!
the QUESTION meme
Simple and easy! Here's how it goes:
1. POST a top-level with your character name
2. REPLY to other people's top-level with a question for that character
3. ANSWER the question you were asked
4. ASK a question of that person's characters in return!
We go back and forth like this asking questions in a thread until one or both of us runs out of questions!
QUESTIONS CAN BE ANYTHING. Serious or silly as you want! What does Jane think of (x)? What does Sarah have for breakfast? How many times a day does Alex masturbate? What's Tom's dream job? The only limit for questions is your imagination.
Replies can be as monosyllabic or as tl;dr are you want; it's up to you. Go wild kids!
no subject
and yes it totally counts
she thinks about it but not for long? Like why spend time... thinking... on relative impossibilities when there are other things to handle. Lives in the moment!!! Because it's better that way. And also because she's not like. RUNS HOME NOW.
What do you think John would need to start living through and realizing in order to start finding it within himself to want or desire any sort of personal change or improvement?
no subject
So anyway, the catalyst that causes him in the books to realise that he's a shitbag is meeting someone from his past that he looked up to as a child. She'd been kind to him as a child, but when she meets the adult (or well 17 year old) Mandrake on the street once more, she seems reluctant to talk to him. Almost afraid of him. This causes him distress, because all he wants to do is be like "Look how far I've come, aren't you proud of me?" but she is basically like "I don't even recognise the person you've become but it sure isn't something to be proud of."
And this basically leaves him devastated. He's never really cared about the good opinion of others, but he cares about hers, because she's the only person still alive who showed him great kindness and fondness as a child. And then to add to that, not many chapters later, he tracks down the girl who saved his life in the previous book and asks her why she did it. And her answer is basically "Don't ask me, I wish I hadn't."
SO YEAH. What I'm getting at here is that, for starters, Mandrake on his own is resistant to change and questioning the system. He's grown up in a seat of immense privilege and is more than happy to continue to benefit from that system and not really look at it too hard, so long as things are going will for him. And even when he talks about it with others in MoM and they yell at him when they find out that the power of magicians is based on slavery (ie, the literal enslavement of demons who are bound to the magician's will and very literally cannot disobey), he doesn't care, because those people and their opinions don't mean anything to him. It's easy for him to dismiss them. They're stupid, they don't know what they're talking about.
So of course, in order for him to start questioning and changing, first of all he needs to form attachments. Which he's VERY reluctant to do, because he sees real friendship as a weakness, and any other form of friendship as untrustworthy. But until he comes to respect someone, he won't care about what they think of him. And that's a hard ask, because he's a little shit who thinks he's better than everybody. But he's gETTING THERE. Very slowly. He respects Light, but their conversations remain superficial. (And he has a vested interest in keeping them so.) I wouldn't say that he respects Annie yet, but he enjoys her company, which is getting close to it, for him. And the same could be said of Billy-- though he doesn't even think of their relationship in those terms. He argues with Billy about everything, so if you asked him he definitely wouldn't say he enjoys his company. But the fact is he enjoys having someone who will banter back and forth with him, though he doesn't realise it. It's refreshing-- nobody ever did that with him back home on a regular basis except Bartimaeus. Everyone either talked down to him (if they were higher on the food chain) or kissed arse with him (if they were lower on the food chain).
So, yes. First comes personal attachments. It's a slow process, making a character who is not only a little shit but also thoroughly determined not to care about others and so emotionally handicapped that he's poorly positioned to do so... ACTUALLY make meaningful relationships where he cares about the other person's opinion and respects it. Once that happens, I think he'll be better positioned to grow as a person. As it stands, he currently still doesn't see anything wrong with the system in his home world. He's just learned not to talk about it to others because man, they don't get it, and it's getting tiring. Lololo orz.
SORRY, THIS BOY SUCKS.
no subject
this is delightful
A+ YOU CAN DO IT MANDRAKE!!!