Question Meme [OOC]

[aa_fandral]

Ask me questions about my character(s) and I will answer. The meme is entirely OOC, questions and answers both. Use it as a fun time to find about about character's choices, motivations, feelings, actions, or anything else you've been wondering.

I play: Mystique (Raven Darkholme), Fandral, and Bullseye.

Comments

[aa_coulson]

How much of Fandral's charm is natural unconscious charisma and how much is calculated manipulation?

Fandral is sexually free and fancy but also has established lasting and important relationships with Thor, Lady Sif and the other two Warriors that have no basis in sexuality. What about these guys is different? Too much like family to think about them that way? Reluctant to trivialize millennia-old warrior bonds with getting grabby? More of a sense of responsibility to Asgard to keep things clean?

BULLSEYE what are you doing with all that Nazi gold? Melting it down and saving up for a giant robot suit to punch Schmidt into the sun maybe?

[aa_fandral]

I think, in his day-to-day management of social relations, all of Fandral's charm could fall under either category. He's super old so I feel like most of his ~charms~ are now unconscious, but a lot of calculation went into their development. For ex, he doesn't like for people to stay fussed at him when he thinks they're being unreasonable, so he plays such situations just so. (I guess kissing Bruce was somewhat colored by this intent. HEROOO)

Fandral is pretty manipulative overall, but he's so overt about it that most of the connotations of that word lose their meaning. Instead I sort of view it as-- few of his social interactions occur accidentally or entirely without awareness of how they might affect others! Or how you might commend a writer for being 'manipulative,' that it's a good thing because genuine reaction is what you want.

Anecdotes of relevance: Fandral zips around superspeed to unnerve Loki then buys him a spider to make peace, managing to knock the Jotun $*%@er momentarily wordless (A FEAT). He drops difficult topics of conversation with Sif when they start becoming difficult, then approaches them at a different angle over dinner. He recognized his raving adamancy with Volstagg wasn't getting him anywhere, so he hit the off button then came back later striking a noble pose. He's been pretty discreet and platonic about hitting on Bruce because Bruce obviously has 3950823 tons of baggage and mostly could use a friend. He is indiscreet about hitting on Amora because yeah, opposite! Overall, Fandral is not very good at just bulling through to the 'objective' truth of things without care for presentation. Everything is packaged. It's not even insincere, artificial, or ...sneaky, it's just all he knows. Of course, he lost it with Loki but I think that exception proves the rule-- it went away pretty fast.

(Note I'm discarding political diplomacy and negotiations into a different pile, assuming that's not the 'charm' we're referring to. Obv that is straight-up calculated.)

Of course, in a sense this is kind of sad. At the point which one can no longer differentiate between 'natural' and 'calculation,' it's hard to say if or when he's ever entirely relaxed or just 'himself.' There are reasons why balancing acts are circus weirdness and not the behavior of normal people, who fall and flail now and then. I think this has affected and is in turn affected by his lack of monogamous or singular relationships. He doesn't have a best friend among Sif, the Warriors Three and Thor, and is (arguably) the least capable of an entirely unaffected romantic relationship. Maybe one day he will be with someone for any length of time where he is completely unconcerned with being charming, but I think it will take some time and growing.

[aa_fandral]

He probably holds in his farts all the time just sayin

[aa_fandral]

Thor, Sif, and the other 2 Warriors resolve into those boxes that I was talking about earlier, except these new boxes are less gendered. I guess the rationale for having so many boxes is that I as a writer inevitably find a harsh discrepancy between the principles of being a courtier and the conduct of an Asgardian warrior-adventurer. I explain discrepancies that have been successfully maintained over hundreds of years with boxes because I'm kind of lame and oversimplify things I guess. This is getting sad and introspective for me. :( ... oh no.

These guys are in the family box. Fandral is not close to his own biological family. He probably had rumors around him as a child about how his mom bred with a human or someone else's husband, blah blah, so he was defensive and guarded since childhood even before he got into the court game a little too early. Nonetheless, I think for plenty of past alts I've played -- even given family trouble and bad relationship modelling, there was room for salacity, emotional needs, or repressed longing to leak into homosocial bromance, or at least more grey area. By now, there's no grey going on with Fandral at all. He doesn't blink at Sif's tits (although there is an odd, mild, sibling-like avoidance of seeing them at all), but he will break your arm if you say she's ugly or not good enough a fighter. He's probably barged or been barged in on while naked with girls and there were good-natured aagh about penis-glimpses or, if the situation was serious, no reaction at all.

Friendship with the core group operates on a wholly different frequency than his sexy times. It would feel incestuous to get with them. Not only have they known each other since they were kids, but childhood was hundreds of years long and adulthood even longer. It'd be creepy like MISS STEPHENIE MEYER's werewolf imprinting thing, at this point.

I think when he was younger this was more confusing, especially when he had poorer impulse control, re: adolescence. He probably crushed on all of them at some point or other (desire to kiss Sif disclosed in solo log). However, some point in his early life he did make the conscious decision they were family-- like siblings, and inherent to that decision, they would never be anything else. I believe the guiding rationale for that decision included all the thoughts you mentioned: he didn't want to jeopardize their friendships, he felt it would screw things up for Asgard if there were sexual shenanigans, never mind romantic ones, and the complications of preferential treatment in crazy military operations. When they started doing really important work for Odin, saving lives, amassing resources for Asgard and the peoples of the Nine Realms, he came to value that responsibility a lot. He wouldn't give it up for some shady shippyness he doesn't really want.

TH'END

posting before things die

[aa_jen]

He's probably barged or been barged in on while naked with girls and there were good-natured aagh about penis-glimpses or, if the situation was serious, no reaction at all.

Yes. I believe we have even touched on this during some scenes. Lol. NOTHING VOLSTAGG HASN'T SEEN BEFORE. CARRY ON.

Though now I'm wondering about Fandral's hero-worship way back when. And now am getting a strangely powerful desire to scene some of it. y/y?

You say it would feel incestuous and yet

you also say I'm not too old for you!!