[Pumpkin] Alma Karma (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
imaginemeandyuu) wrote2012-01-24 12:52 am
imaginemeandyuu) wrote2012-01-24 12:52 am
Entry tags:
Question meme?
I apparently broke 1000 comments a few minutes ago so uh QUESTION MEME! Ask me questions and I will ramble at you and then ask you questions back. We go back and forth until we exhaust ourselves!
Just for Alma Karma.
Just for Alma Karma.
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Yeah, he really is your type.
NAH GO AHEAD AND ASK ME A QUESTION IDK...
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I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT DTB but I am given to understand that Hei/Li are either different personalities or different personas? How are they balancing self-presentation in Thusia so far?
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"Li Shengshun" is this adorable little college student who works every day job known to man and pays his rent on time and avoids his neighbors because he's socially awkward as hell and they are party people and also helps strange ladies run from the police and also takes police officers out on dates when they feel sad. Li is a nice guy who works very hard and eats a whole lot and is pretty much invisible in that he is EVERYWHERE but is also incredibly unremarkable.
"Hei" is Chinese Electric Batman. His voice is lower and harsher than Li's, he wears a mask, and when he isn't wearing a mask his face is impassive. He does not hesitate to maim or kill, doesn't have any problems with foul play, uses sneak attacks and prior injuries and every advantage he can possibly get. He's emotionless and deadly, called The Black Reaper by Contractors far and wide, who STILL manage to underestimate him.
The REAL Hei? The one whose name is never given? He's a man who went to war as a child for a sister who'd become what most people called a monster. While still human, still a CHILD, Hei joined in a battle that only should have included Contractors like his little sister, Bai. Because he wanted her to know that he still loved her and still wanted to be with her. During the course of this war, he became so fearsome that he gained the nickname The Black Reaper AS THE ONLY HUMAN ACTUALLY FIGHTING IN THE WAR. All of this he did to protect and be near his sister, because he loved her that much. Then, five years before canon started? The war ended. Bai disappeared. Hei suddenly had Bai's abilities. So basically HELLO FUCKED UP SISCON NICE TO SEE YOU TAKE AN EXTRA FIVE LEVELS IN DESPERATION.
The true Hei feels too deeply to be either "Hei" or "Li", but comes bleeding out in both of them. Every time "Hei" goes against orders, refuses to kill a teammate, protects a target, some other merciful act that can't be seen as a mercy because he's a CONTRACTOR and thus strictly rational and self-serving? That's the real him. Every time Li gets petulant, avoidant, doesn't seem to know how to handle people? That's the real him. But Hei doesn't know "Hei" isn't real, because he convinced himself that "Hei" was real.
The thing in Thusia is, Hei is trying to balance both "Li" and "Hei", and in such a confined space that was doomed from the start. He fought in public and introduced himself as "Hei". He fed people and introduced himself as "Li". Then he was "Li" to Kohaku, only to have her follow him out into Nature where he was ACTING as "Hei". Ticky brings "Hei" out in him really easily, but he also brings out quite a bit of the REAL Hei, which he has no idea how to deal with.
BASICALLY BALANCING SELF-PRESENTATION IN THUSIA IS GOING TERRIBLY.
Tell me about how Alma's exorcist headlady may affect his actions/reactions in Thusia!
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Alma's exorcist headlady is a constant little fingerpoke into his actions and reactions in just about every way. It's actually very hard to separate her because she's not really a separate headspace so much as a slightly different type of thought that drifts through Alma's mind. One of the things I rambled about in an essay before is that there's no separate "Alma" or "that woman" -- there's just separate lives that are now channelling into one person. So when Alma thinks of his experiences as a kid with baby Kanda in Lab 6 he thinks of them as "his own experiences" and when he thinks of those foggy memories of being out and about and talking about flowers and being an exorcist and those various things he hasn't experienced as Alma but still has an awareness of he thinks of them as "her own experiences". But that doesn't mean that the two 'act' differently in the here and now (though their different experiences socially may have lead to different actions before/after) -- there was no time in his life that Alma wasn't actually that woman; it's just that there was a time in his life when Alma didn't know he was her, so all his reactions as "Alma" were fed by an identity which pre-existed in him but whose memories and past he wasn't able to find until he was faced with her own corpse. Basically, from his own perspective, "Alma" is sort of like an amnesiac of "that woman" so his experiences are still based off the same basic core, while current Alma has his experiences as an amnesiac but also an (incomplete) grasp of who he was before the amnesia. Only "amnesia" is actually "death and a brain transplant". It's sort of a thought exercise in that I think in alternate circumstances he might have split into multiple personalities but he didn't, so this is all going on in a single mind and with open acknowledgement that they're all an identity that is Alma.
So saying how it affects his actions and reactions is hard because being her has always affected his actions/reactions imho, but being aware of having been her affects them slightly differently -- well, I guess, with more awareness of where some of these drive/feelings/reactions come from and thus a bit more bitterness/self-depreciation and so on. At the same time it also lends greater significance to getting things he wanted or having experiences that would be significant anyway, because then it's getting/having experiences that he has wanted for a long time rather than a short one, and ones which she thought she'd never get to experience. For one example, getting to see flowers (flowers are a huuuuge thing to her) takes on a greater symbolic value by means of it resembling the promise she and pastKanda made -- only where before they died without fulfilling it, they can seriously go admire it whenever. (If they were lotuses it'd be even more of a big deal, while poor Kanda would probably be like I WILL...TRY TO PICK THE REAL LOTUSES OUT...SURE, but even as it is Alma ended up crying over OH MY GOD THERE ARE FLOWERS ON A VINE YUU LOOK AT THE FLOWERS YUU).
The other area it's coming out is in the difficulty explaining his knowledge/lack of knowledge to people. So Aerta's like DO U WANT TO SEE STARS and he's like YES I HAVE NEVER SEEN THEM. SORT OF. Because you say "stars" and he gets a mental image of a starry sky but at the same time he hasn't seen them and it's a big deal to think he can see them someday. Both because he grew up in a lab never seeing the sky and because it ties her experiences closer to his.
I HOPE THAT MAKES SENSE WHAT A TANGLED SUBJECT.
Who is Hei closest to in Thusia?
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...Slick...
HEI IS NOT KNOWN FOR HIS GOOD DECISIONS, OKAY...
Here are his Slick feelings. :x
HOW DOES ALMA FEEL ABOUT DELLEN'S RACISM...
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Bitter but in a self-turned way. He really can't just go "well I'm human enough". If he could, this would be a different story! But he can't. He doesn't blame Dellen. She's a god. The gods here all have their areas, right? "Being human" is a trait or identity not tied to behavior but to a mix of what you are and how you identify and on both cases Alma is aware that both his body and his viewpoint are fucked. There's no helping it. He wishes there were a god he could go to for a favor or something that would get his healing back up to how it used to be when he was young so he wouldn't have to worry about going to gods otherwise, but if there isn't that, there isn't that either.
So he's resolved himself to be careful but obviously that isn't actually going to happen because he has zero idea of how to be careful with his own body :'D
Any app plans?
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JOHNNY RAYFLO FROM VASSALORD... BECAUSE AVIY WANTED VAMPIRES AND IS TERRIBLE. AND HE IS MY TYPE. In that he's a secretly moe bad decision dino with MANY STRONG FEELINGS who tries to hide that. yes.
How many Yuus does it take to change a lightbulb?
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The lightbulb is never getting changed.
How do you anticipate Johnny adjusting to being dead for good? CURIOUS.
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I WILL HAVE TO GIVE THAT SOME SERIOUS THOUGHT because I have yet to, but I think he might consider it a sort of release? Lord knows he's suicidal enough when given a decent reason, but I'm not exactly sure yet. HE'D BE SAD HE LEFT CHERRY BEHIND, BUT... :xa
How is Alma taking to Thusia?