rpanons | Big imagination full of real things

Rundown:

rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

Rules:

Do not post pornographic or shocking images.
Do not share private entries, plurks, chat logs, etc.
Do not use this community as your social/political/hatespeech soapbox.
Do not be redundant. One page does not need three or more threads on one topic/theme.
Do not treat this comm like your personal Plurk or Twitter. Off-topic happens, but it should be open for discussion and not just a play-by-play of your life. No one cares.

CONCERNS | RESOURCES

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I guess I need to finish the game before I really think about this too hard. How about advice for an early canonpoint then?

Got it. And yeah, FF8 is different from some of the other games of the time because it tries to be incredibly character driven, specifically with Squall and his relationship with Rinoa. If you compare/contrast the FMVs in FF8 with FF7 or FF9 you will notice a huge difference in what they chose to focus on, which, in turn, tells you a lot about the game. It's also, without giving too much away, a big circle in certain important respects which will be very relevant to your interests later.

So I'm just going to focus on Disc 1 Squall, with apologies if you haven't beaten Disc 1 yet. That said, definitely don't start RPing him until you get to a certain conversation involving basketball (you'll know it when you see it, and if you've seen it then you know what I'm talking about) because that'll explain why he reacts the way he reacts.

Disc 1 Squall? Hates attachments. He hates being close to people, trusting them, depending on them, and being friends. If you place him in a jamjar he'd try his hardest to keep a professional distance from them because...why bother? They'll vanish in the end.

This isn't to say he can't work with them, because, given his future/current line of work he has to learn how to interact with strangers and do so well. Rather, it's the difference between coworkers/a client and two friends. The earlier you take Squall, the more comfortable he'd (at least initially) feel in Consignment versus...Eachdraidh, or the Box, or Route, or anywhere else. Consignment because he can try to justify it to himself as it being yet another mission and the people around him as just coworkers. With the rest, it gets harder because personal gets involved.

The awkward comes into play the more you try to take early canon Squall from his comfort zone (professional) and shove him into something he doesn't like dealing with (personal.) He isn't uncomfortable with Rinoa trying to get him to dance because he doesn't know how to dance, obviously, and I'm willing to bet Squall had at least one class that drilled how to dance into him in case he's sent on a mission where he has to. He's uncomfortable with Rinoa trying to get him to dance because she's hitting on him and he doesn't know how to do personal and doesn't want to know how to do personal.

Similarly, Zell discomforts him and Squall's awkward as hell around him because Zell's fucking friendly. Rinoa and Zell both succeed in breaking down Squall's walls the fastest because of their lack of restraint, whereas Quistis held back because of her teacher role and thus had less success.

Conversely: think about all of the times Squall has to deal with someone in a position of importance and has no problems with talking to them. (And if that hasn't happened yet for you then pay attention when he does.) He's basically the guy who'd be more comfortable taking orders or in a meeting than he would be sitting with the CEO's eight year old kid for fifteen minutes.

This also ties into why he struggles with leadership roles. It isn't that he's incapable. It's rather that he prefers to work alone. The more leadership he's given, the more people he has to deal with. The more people he has to deal with, the more he gets attached. The more he gets attached, the more it hurts when they're gone. Furthermore, if he's in charge it means that it's his job to keep them safe and mitigate risks to the best of his ability, whereas if he's just a cog in the machine...it still hurts but it's at least not his responsibility, and as a cog it doesn't mean that he has to personally interact with everyone.

Long story short, he's deeply afraid of loss and it informs how he reacts to things. As long as he doesn't get personally attached to something it's okay. The more he cares, the harder it is for him to deal with it, and the more he'd do to keep it safe while simultaneously trying his damned hardest to keep it at arm's length. Small talk about zombies and how to kill them in the middle of a zombie invasion event is okay, because it's business. Small talk about movies will have him trying to nope away as hard as he can. He'll have the most success with either people that definitely let him keep a distance and make no efforts to bridge the distance while being people he can't ignore (coworkers and supervisors, friendship possibly sneaks up on him without him realizing) or people who come on so incredibly strong that he can't escape (Zell, Rinoa.) Again, the reason why Quistis failed at breaking down his walls is because she was too friendly to be a straight up teacher and professional contact that he can keep an emotional distance from, but not friendly enough that she steamrolled over him.

omg anon this is so great! thank you! that's basically what I was trying to come up with while thinking about his character so far. I'm only a little passed the second dream sequence so I have a LONG way to go but this is still super super helpful. definitely bookmarking! once work lets up a little i plan on steamrolling this game to the finish but for now ill have this to think about :)

Awesome! Glad to help. And if you want more meta once you get further along just say the word and I'll give you more material. Otherwise, go kick ass.

Big imagination full of real things

ayrt

no subject

no subject

no subject