Route 29: ｍｏｄｓ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
these_balls) wrote2010-04-27 11:40 pm
these_balls) wrote2010-04-27 11:40 pm
Entry tags:
Understand the secrets and have some fun
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Cole | Dragon Age | Not Reserved
Name: Fleur
Personal Journal: n/a
E-mail: n/a
AIM/Plurk/Etc.: pm preferred for contact, please!
Timezone: PST
Current Characters in Route: n/a
Character
Name: Cole
Series: Dragon Age
Timeline: After Dragon Age: Inquisition
Canon Resource Links: Wiki
Personality:
Cole's confused. Once, he thought he was the ghost of a dead boy named Cole, then he knew he was a nonhuman spirit but not what kind. He knows he doesn't quite "fit", but makes the best of everything by acknowledging that whatever he is, he has a purpose and a drive: to help people.
Cole is acutely empathetic and open to feeling. He looks melancholic because he feels pain everywhere... but it isn't his, so he can deal with it. He turns out to be a spirit embodiment of compassion--the ability to help others is all he needs to be happy, so he is.
He doesn't even need a solid sense of identity. He has a sense of self, of friendship, and of other such things, but still. He's uncomfortable when things are "about" him, since that's not how it's supposed to work. He's used to others forgetting him, assuming they can see him. He even forgot who he was once, in trying to "help" the original Cole after death by taking his form. He doesn't need to establish himself to be a helper. He lets people remember and relate to him for... basically utilitarian reasons, as with Sera, who's terrified of him--he needs her to recognize him as a teammate. He starts by letting the Inquisition remember him to foster a working relationship. He wants to help them help other people on the long-term! The fact that he makes friends with most of them is a happy accident... and one that he's nervous about, but one which he's humbled by and one which he appreciates.
It makes him nervous because attachments make him nervous. They're risky. He admits to the Inquisitor, if they let Varric resolve his companion quest, that he thought that "changing means losing your friends". He alienated the first two friends he ever made when they discovered that he was a serial killer, meaning that their friendship with him became a painful memory. Attachments risk hurting both people connected to them, so he's used to coming into people's lives and disappearing without a trace.
In the version of canon he's being apped from, he's lost the ability that allows him to do that, i.e. selective memory erasure. However, his lack of experience fostering social connections shows. Cole is friendly and means well, but he's awkward. He is literal and bad at explaining himself, waxing conceptual while missing implications and cues a normal person would get, and has no sense of boundaries. He asks people uncomfortable questions because he wants to understand them, or make the questions not uncomfortable anymore! Isn't that a good thing?
Cole has a literal "forgive and forget" and "do or don't" mentality. As pure concepts, spirits have black-and-white, clearly-defined natures. He starts of seeing it as more compassionate to let a person forget a terrifying memory, even if it was formative. If a person is dying in agony and can't be helped, it's more compassionate to put them out of their misery than to prolong their suffering in case a way is found to save them. If a person made the choice to hurt innocent people and hasn't resolved to stop, they need to be removed before they cause more pain. He's naive for all the pain he's touched. He knows that things are complicated and bad, but why do they have to be?
He starts appreciating the idea of "trying", just being there for people and placating them when you can't fix things, and the like if he starts to become more human. He also gets over his isolation and fear of loss, since he owns more of his own feelings and understands that pain is sometimes necessary. Nothing's perfect outside of the world of concepts, but there is room for it to get better.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+ Compassion. Literally Cole's foundation. He is attuned to others' feelings and goes out of his way to make his surroundings better for the people there, and that'll extend to his Pokemon. He's determined in doing it, too!
+ Resourcefulness. He's determined and creative in it. Seemingly random items start going missing in Skyhold after Cole's recruitment, and it'll turn out he's been using them to "help out"around the castle, often through cause and effect.
+ Independence. Cole is more used to helping others than being helped. He likes having friends and company, but seems comfortable alone, and he is able to look after himself.
+ Observation. Feelings aren't all Cole is in touch with. He often comments on the environment when he's in the party, feelings, smells, etc.
- Naivete. He is familiar with the effect they have on people, but he doesn't get all the finer points of human society and etiquette.
- Inflexibility. Cole is black and white. Though he's getting to understand compromise better, he's still not used to it.
- Sneakiness. He used to be invisible to most people, and either he was afraid of them or they were afraid of him--he isn't used to being straightforward about everything he does.
- Poor social skills. He still hasn't really learned how to talk to people on their level, or how to tell where their boundaries are before he crosses them.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Breeder
Starter: Ralts, please. Cole is a mind-reader, and sensing the emotions of others is a big part of who he is. If that's not enough, my second choice is Shuppet!
Password: Cherries Jubilee
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First Person Sample:
[The PokeGear comes on to video. Cole's eyes are drifting. While he's not sure what the right part of his PokeGear is to look at, he knows it can hear him, so he gives a soft:] Hello!
This isn't for me. This bird wants me to send a message. I... don't know what kind of message she wants me to send... I asked her what I should say, but all she says is her name.
I think... she wants me to tell you that if any of you are the Trainer whose cat attacked her brother today, she wants to fight you. Your cat, I mean.
[he looks offscreen.]
Did you want me to tell them that? ["prr-gee, prr-prr-prrrgee!" flap-flap-flap.] That was a yes... Was it?
She seems happy... so I think that that's all!
But I don't think that you should fight her. She already feels better, now that she's said it to you... If you're listening. Or when you hear this later.
Don't do it, if you hear this later, instead of now. She'll have forgotten that she wanted to fight your cat later.
Thank you. She doesn't know she's thankful, too... But she is. I can tell. She's happy because so many people can hear this--it means that her feelings are important, like they're big and loud and hard to ignore because they matter.
So thank you for listening.
[a cheery smile, and cut.]
Third Person Sample: Cole was scared, at first. There were people back in that village, but he hadn't been able to hear them. That couldn't have happened unless he had lost his connection to the Fade. That couldn't happen, either, because he was from there and he still knew that he was.
Was that not enough? Was it not enough to remember the Fade if... it wasn't here at all? Was there some kind of wall put up between it and himself?
He'd gone out to the woods to see if anything changed. His mind might have been playing tricks on him, because he was afraid, but he felt more like a human than he ever had before, feeling his stomach churn and his throat dry, wondering how long he'd been sleeping in that place, and then he started hearing again, so maybe that was wrong, too--the thinking that there was no Fade here.
But he heard the animals.
Maybe it had "moved".
Could it do that?
Cole sat down in a tuft of grass with his legs crossed. He watched one bird chase another between a couple of trees. Animals felt things, like fear or anger, just not in words. These two were probably playing. Cole nodded to himself--yes, yes, I know this. He rocked a little and dug his fingernails into the dirt.
Then he finally heard words: "He likes it out here!"
That was the tiny person with the green head, sitting next to him and crossing its legs on the ground--her legs, actually. He could pick up on that, too. It sounded like a girl. She was swaying from side to side and patting the ground. Left, right, left, right.
She sounded happy, too. Hearing that in words was a huge relief. He scratched the ground a little harder and started to smile. She felt that he was feeling better--and he felt that she did.
"Yes," he said.
She understood. She smiled just like a child would. He picked up on that, too. She was, in fact, a child. He heard "newness", unless that was her hearing it in him.
A couple of anchors tangled together. They both had someone to talk to.
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He will be taken post-game from a route in which his personal quest was finished, Varric's way.
Taking Varric's route forces Cole to better understand how humans think and feel, and to own and accept his own humanlike thoughts. By the end of the game with this option taken, Cole has "grown away" further from his original nature to develop more of a humanlike identity. He's more "grounded"; his way of speaking becomes more down to earth and he stops firing off streams of consciousness. Since he can't free himself from it anymore through invisibility and memory erasure, he's forced to start learning his way through socialization, and being not just compassionate, but sensitive and respectful.
It's a mixed blessing. He has more hangups thinking like a human than he does thinking like a spirit, he isn't used to feeling like his feelings are "part" of him and tends to just wish they would go away, and he needs to compensate for both needing to catch up on life skills and losing command over some of his original abilities. Because his priorities and frame of mind change, he's not fully adjusted to those changes, he's more tentative, regretful, and overthinking than he is pre-companion quest. However, his way of thinking becomes more flexible and less "results" oriented, with him becoming more "someone" and less of a concept he always needs to serve. He likes learning and new experiences for their own sake, and because he's more open to them, he takes more away from events than he used to--in his own words, he "remembers more". He also starts appreciating the idea of compromise, companionship for the sake of companionship, and that sometimes it's the thought that counts when you try to help others.
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Congratulations, you have a fun and exciting adventure awaiting you.
Now that you've been accepted...
[○] Respond to this with your character's journal. This is a must!
[○] Comment in the Taken Characters post, alphabetized by series: # thru G, H thru O, or P thru Z.
[○] Comment to the Friend Add/Remove, and update your friends list.
[○] Join the following communities:
Note! You will not be accepted to the main or logs community until you've commented in the aforementioned places.
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We'd also like to take this moment to inform you of the Eastern Kanto Ferry! For only P2000, you can take a three day, all-inclusive ferry ride from New Bark Town to Pallet Town and begin a new pokémon journey in the Kanto region! Otherwise, feel free to start in Johto!
Thank you! See you in the Pokémon world!
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Thanks! This is the journal.