#I'm gonna create a work environment that is so chaotic

[thesiltverses]

I was listening to S2Q&A and I went over the character limit on Spotify so I'm just gonna drop my comment here instead:

I think all y'all do incredible work, but I'm especially a fan of the sound design! It's one of my favorite things about audio dramas that makes them distinct from audio books. The environmental storytelling that comes through is so satisfying and easy to understand without sounding manufactured.

I might be a minority, but I actually love the muddiness and chaos of your action/battle scenes. You're clearly mastering a fine line between listenability and honoring the disarray of the scene. I enjoy the brief pockets where I don't understand what's happening beat-for-beat because it feels like I'm caught in the fray of it, and not being able to 'keep the score' until it's over ramps up the tension deliciously.

Everyone does fabulous work on this, but I just wanted to gas up your sound design. It's like costuming or lighting- you're doing your job well when those things support the story, and it means people don't notice that effort at times because it's so seamless. One 'tech' to another: very well done!!!

Thank you so much, that's really kind and means a lot! Other than in the Q&As, I haven't really talked that much about picking up sound design duties over the course of the series, but it really has been a meaningful and exciting learning experience for me, not least as a writer getting to hone his writing via audio editing.

Since you mentioned it and I can't pass up the opportunity for a rant - listenability and what that actually should mean in practice is a topic I think about a lot.

I think it's important for audiodrama designers not to get haughty or defensive when listeners struggle to comprehend a particular sequence (I have designed scenes poorly where the dialogue clearly didn't rise over the background noise sufficiently, I've designed scenes poorly where the action was clearly too chaotic or lacked sufficient cues to help the audience through it).

But equally - between wildly different auditory processing capabilities and the wildly different listening environments and listening habits at play, I don't believe there's any perfect state of comprehensibility available in this medium, and sometimes I think our hunt for it can lead us astray.

Over the years, I've heard from listeners who honestly can't tell the voices of actors with globe-spanning accents apart, I've heard from listeners who can't pick up on environmental SFX cues indicating a change of location and need something more explicit in the dialogue whenever there's a scene shift, I've heard from listeners who can only listen through one earbud in the workplace and therefore don't want binaural sound, listeners who struggle to hear any action sequence whatsoever as more than incoherent noise, and listeners who can only enjoy audiodramas solely as a second-screen activity and who can't keep up with a fast-moving or complicated plot without regular recaps.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of that, and those listeners aren't wrong to respond in this way - everyone has their own processing threshold, and everyone has their own needs and preferences as an audience member.

But I also don't believe I'd personally want to create a full-cast show under the limitations that would arise from my attempting to strictly solve all of those problems at once (as opposed to being flexible and considerate about them during the design process).

There has to be room for calculated ambition and big swings in the medium, and there has to be room to trust the audience to keep up with you during the ambitious moments, albeit with one eye firmly on accessibility - otherwise audiodrama is likely to remain dominated by 'one actor with a nice soothing voice telling stories' or 'one small group of characters having lots of conversations about their ongoing efforts to resolve a single plot thread'. Which is often fantastic, but there's plenty of it already!

When it comes to action scenes in particular, I've been trying to operate under the consistent philosophy of 'before, DURING, after', with equal weight and design attention given to each third.

In other words, if we do enough careful and quiet work to establish the environment and props and rising tension ahead of a big noisy chaotic sequence, and if we do the careful and quiet work afterwards to clearly show where the characters have ended up and what condition they're in, my belief is that it's 100% acceptable if the audience can't immediately track the movement of Character A's fist hitting Character B and Character B falling against a table in three seconds flat.

Like good action editing in cinema, an engaged audience member will follow the motion and comprehend the outcome cleanly, even if they don't take in all the details. That, to me, is a vastly better result for the work than having to include a 'oh, no, he stabbed you with that knife!!' line of dialogue.

Anyway, you just wanted to gas me up which was very kind and instead I wrote out this big long blather. So apologies, and thank you so much again!

[suugarbabe]

Hey I don’t want to stress you but when will post the spin off of Protego ? because you’ve said soon, but it’s already June and I want to know how far are you because you said you’re goal is 3.k work or something

i'll be honest when i first got this ask i got really irritated and annoyed but i wasn't in a good headspace and a lot of stuff was going on in my irl life etc, but i'm better now so i'm gonna answer :)

I am anticipating the spin off of Protego (called Respect the Family) to have it's first chapter's release by the middle of next week (by next saturday July 6). I am currently at about half the word count that i want, but that is because I literally had just my cell phone to work from and while i know a lot of people are comfortable with that, i personally cannot mentally work well on that kind of device. however i have a laptop again (thankfully) and will be working on the series more frequently.

I was also going through many many many life changes that created very chaotic environment for me both physically and mentally over the last two months that made it just not a good headspace for me to work. if you ask my closest friends i did not work on any writing in that time.

I hope this answers all your questions and also enlightens others :)

[diamondmind777]

Letter For Jerry

Dear Jerry,

It's always nice to hear from you, I love receiving your letters they're so neat and well put together :) You most definitely have classy taste with your stationary, I admire it.

2024 Has been a bit chaotic but it has finally mellowed out. I don't remember if I told you, but I quit my job of 7 years last October. They were wanting too much of my time (6day work week) and being the millennial that I am, I've been seeking a life-work balance, so I quit. I loved that job, and it paid well but I value my home life too much. I may not have children, but I have hobbies and fur babies I want to dedicate my time to. Two days was not enough to begin with and then they were trying to strip me down to one, I respectfully said, "fuck that" and left. The decision was impulsive, threw my life into chaos, but now I have another job, still working as a lab technician fulltime but only 3 days a week now. The work is much slower paced and like zero stress, I work alone in a laboratory for 12 hours and it's been quite nice. I have no complaints :) Not gonna lie, switching up from a fast-paced work environment to what I have now did come with its challenges, my mind/body was so conditioned to multi-task and work quickly that this current job felt mundane and boring at first. But I bring some of my hobbies to work and it makes time fly when the work volume isn't stimulating enough. I cannot see myself going back to an 8-5 job.

Did you get to see the space needle in Seattle?

I have the desire to visit every state just to go to state or national parks. I really enjoy hiking and now that the weather is cooling down in Texas, I am ready to immerse myself in nature again. Amidst the chaos that ensued in spring, I missed out on the gardening I planned to do. This fall I decided to try my hand at composting. Playing with dirt, leaves and bits of produce brings out the inner child within me, the child that used to make mud pies and potions in the backyard. What's your favorite childhood memory?

My husband and I have planned a trip to West Virginia in October to explore nature, there should be lots of maple trees to see. I am so excited to experience the colors of fall like in the movies. Here in east Texas most everything loses its color (very millennial grey) or is evergreen (very twilight). I want to see oranges, reds, and yellows!

Vanessa Carlton's concert still feel like it was just yesterday. I went and saw Melanie Martinez a second time in May and a few days ago I saw Twenty-One Pilots. It was SUCH A GOOD concert! The pyrotechnics were cool, and their performance was phenomenal! ahh, I'm fangirling just thinking about it! My next concert is in October, I'm gonna see Charli xcx and Troy Sivan. The vibe is gonna be SO ravey and I am SO ready! I love music so much <3 So don't hate me but I haven't given Taylor's Swifts new album my undivided attention yet (I've been hyper focused on other artists). BUT what I have heard is as brilliant as expected, that woman is poetic af and I love her for that. I love seeing the religious fans decode and decipher all the lore she has created for the fanbase, the tea is always good. folklore and evermore are my current favorites, what about yours?

Now that I have opened the door for celebrity gossip, what is your take on the Sabrina Carpenter and Camila Cabello's love triangle album drops? I don't really listen to either of their music but it's all over the internet algorithm and I can't escape it. I think miss Sabrina most certainly has a type because Joshua Bassett and Shawn Mendes look similar to me.

Are there any more trips or concerts in your agenda before the year ends? I heard someone say that there are only 15 more weekends until Christmas arrives. By the time you get this letter it'll be less than that! When you put it in that perspective it makes me feel like I should probably start Christmas Shopping NOW.

Well, I shall end this letter here. If I don't hear from you until next year,

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, HAPPY THANKSGIVING, MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR! may the rest of 2024 be filled with adventure and self-love ❤❤❤

your friend,

elle

ps. Thank you for the wax seals :)

[aphee-sheiz]

Before I thought that segregation by sex in schools is kinda puritanism-driven and is a remnant of conservatism across Europe, specifically the UK, but now, as a teacher myself, I really see how it can benefit students.

I teach kids a variety of things one can use a PC for, like creating games, apps, the basics of classic school programming etc. As much as I hate it, it's always many more boys than girls in class - due to comp sci being associated with male gender role, so sons are more likely to be enrolled in the course by their parents than daughters and all that. So I'm used to teaching boys-only classes now.

Oh what chaos it is to teach such a class. No energy left after a couple of hours. But I'm not complaining (I'm complaining), or rather, that's not my point. When it's just boys, it's absolute havoc to my brain, yes, nonetheless it feels balanced. They all, or almost all, speak loudly, sing another trending meme song and crack unfunny jokes. It takes away from the lesson, of course, but as long as they all do it, the overall pacing remains the same. They all process new knowledge to the best of their current abilities as chaotic fifth grades who are sometimes interested in the final outcome of their work (be it a game, an edited picture, or an app). Not all they could do if I was better at maintaining discipline, but probably all they can do not feeling totally bossed around.

But! Once a girl or two join the class, it all feels out of place. Unlike boys, they focus for longer periods of time; they don't feel the need to use their phone once every 3 minutes; and yeah, definitely quieter, too.

That makes them better learners - not because they have some unique female gene of genius, but because their socialization led them to behaving better in class, hence listening more attentively to the teacher, hence processing new information faster and better.

So what happens when there are girls in class? Good third the time, they sit there with nothing to do, staring at their screens, waiting for their male classmates to finish messing around and listen to me for the fourth time, because their attention span didn't allow to hear the whole explanation at once, which is why they can't finish the task (don't know how). I saw this happening in a class with children of 7-8 yrs, of 9-11 yrs, and 12-13 yrs. I heard my (male) colleagues say things like "I have a miracle of a class with most girls, they are so quiet and focused, working so hard".

I wish I could give them extra work, but it's not always possible. At their age, let's say reading a tutorial and following it can be much harder than an adult can imagine it can be. So I'd have to, idk, split and try to basically teach two different classes at once, which will result to my brain frying and to kids hardly following anyway (I tried, yes). And I can't just be like, "anywho boys, Lily has already finished the task you slow pokes, so idgaf you fucked around in the meantime, we're gonna continue whether you understood or not".

And istg this pisses me off! Girls just don't make the most out of lessons because of boys who happen to be in the same class with them. Don't get me wrong, I don't blame the boys. Kids will be kids, I get it. But I just wish girls got a chance to study in a more suitable environment that would help them work to their full potential, without others forcing them to fall behind and waste study time.

Oh how I wish to teach a girls-only class one day. But for that to happen, parents should stop thinking of comp sci extra curriculum classes as "boys' activity" first, at the very least 😔

[fantasticcloudcreation]

Ok I know my last post was like "what if I relapse and lose 20lbs in the next 2 months" and my post before that was like "I'm so happy I grew out of my eating disorder and I'm still skinny and everything is great !!! "

Well , today's post is like , I love that I still have a thigh gap in random situations !!! like I just drank a whole bottle of wine by myself tonight and (would like some more honestly might open another bottle) im feeling the chaos of being a young inexperienced girl thinking about how to create my own money as an independent artist out in the world doing my own thing without a specific boss or company to work for etc like mostly freelance independent contractor starting my own small business and whatnot BUT at least my thigh gap is still just hanging out being present offering small comforts in the middle of this professional "emerging artist" chaos !!!! Like what a small but meaningful comfort to just be chillin in bed "trying to get some work done" and let my knees fall in against each other and there's still a nice lil gap there between my thighs... Like if I flex my thigh muscles it closes but like that's fine it's still there when I'm just chillin without any effort on my part. (If I lose another 10-20 lbs honestly it probably wouldn't close even if I tried to flex my thighs and that was one of my favorite things when I was at my LW was the way my thigh gap was unavoidable and things were constantly falling thru my lap lmfao , like honestly at this point it would probably be annoying to be that skinny /now that I'm working using tools every day like setting your phone/pencil etc on your lap idk it'd be annoying to fall thru all the time; and I don't think I could make it back to that anyway bc I don't want to lose the muscle I've gained but like ,,, 10 pounds ??? I can do that let's make it happen lol )

Anyway lmk if anyone relates to this / I miss the ed community even tho I've been trying to grow out of it like idk I'm 26 there's things to accomplish but I'm already out here relapsing on cigarettes and alcohol and other drugs I might as well embrace the thinspo relapse at this point 🙃

And like it's one thing to be a chubby teenager romanticizing anorexia / just wanting to be skinny for prom etc it's another thing to be like , a college senior who suddenly found the "willpower" to be a "successful anorexic" and you now have to Force yourself to eat food with carbs+protein so you don't pass out in sculpture class again (passing out with welding equipment is fucking scary AF omg) / can keep performing in your dance classes etc ,,, and then it's a Whole 'Nother Thing to be a full grown adult / out of school / out in the ~ real world ~ (briefly felt like I was over the whole thing) but then realizing "the art world" is just as chaotic and disordered as your college environment, it's 1000% ok if you're abusing Adderall and other drugs (except I don't have health insurance so I need an alternative to adderall = caffeine and ed behaviors,, oops, oh well ,,, ) -> -> what matters more, "success" or "wellness" ? ? The vibe is almost like, if you're not disordered are you even a real ""artist"" ?? It's like bro I'm gonna be 27 in a few months and I'm not interested in joining the 27 Club lol let me live with whatever wellness I can manage for myself haha. But also maybe I can lose another 10 lbs and be extra skinny 👀 20 is probably too much / I don't need to be under 100 I've done that I hit that goal I can let it go.......someone remind me when I get to 105 and I'm like "it's not enough!!" Girl it's enough let it go we've been there done that moving on. Lifting 50 lbs > being medically underweight.

Anyway. Long ass rant talking to myself. I'll probably go open a new bottle of wine and regret it in the morning. Main thing!!! I'm fucking free!!!!! I can do whatever I want!!!! I can get fucked up alone tonight/ already applied for a contractor job for next month / already have plans thru December and then feb-may next year, I'm honestly doing great, it's ok if I drink some alcohol and do some drugs . Like, yeah the "wellness" industry is a whole thing, but the "art world" is a whole separate beast - choose which one to focus on. Drugs and wellness don't really mix; drugs and art are kind of a package deal ? I love drugs let's keep doing drugs honestly. It's worked out so far !! (If youre reading this and you don't currently do drugs, pls pls don't feel like you need to do drugs in order to be a successful artist bc it's 100% not like that but also I've been doing drugs for 10 years + trying to stop bc I thought "professionally" it would be a good idea idk , just talking myself thru the fact that all the ~arts professionals~ I've met this summer also do drugs lmfao - not like they'd ever pressure you into it but more they wouldn't care if I do it or not)

Anyway, if you're still reading and you made it this far - life is weird. I'm gonna try to lose 10 pounds and get some more art gigs this season. Balance between wellness and indulgence and everything that comes with drugs vs helping friends find their healthy limits... It's a process we'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading ❤️ I love you always feel free to dm if you need advice ❤️

[road-rhythm]

also aquinian anon again one thing i realized after typing out stuff to you is that curating fandom experiences also largely involves avoiding toxicity and doing your own thing, so I'm very interested and grateful to your insight but after taking some time to think about things I realized i was not following stuff that brings me joy or I'm in spaces with people who don't have boundaries. so if you have advice for keeping boundaries and curation of fandom stuff, im all ears too

The best I can tell you is what works for me. And I've fucked up plenty. But I'll give it my best shot.

First of all: judging by your previous asks, yeah, I reckon a lot of your headaches have been as much a result of others' boundary issues as your own. Sounds like you're already headed in the right direction just by recognizing that this isn't fun for you, and that you are, in fact, here to have fun. Keep that at the forefront of your mind, and the perspective will probably help more than anything else.

As far as setting and keeping boundaries goes, you've got two questions to contend with: what sort of boundaries exist (or don't) in the fanspaces you frequent, and what sort of boundaries you set for yourself. I'm assuming that you interact with other fans/their fanworks here on Tumblr and on AO3, that you're at least familiar with Twitter and Discord as general ideas, and that you'll have seen some LJ and/or Dreamwidth pages even if you're not a regular on those sites.

ETA: Oh, shit, I forgot the cut 🤦‍♀️ (And you get a table of contents again) (small one this time)

External boundaries: affordances and engagement

Internal boundaries: when (not) to argue on the internet

Spötterdämmerung: Twilight of the Gits

———————————————————

External boundaries: affordances and engagement

Present-day fandom exists overwhelmingly on the internet. That means that fandom's infrastructure is the websites fans interact on. Within the last ten years, and even more so within the last fifteen, the sites where fandom takes place have changed a lot.

You probably know that Strikethrough on LiveJournal was one of the big pushes that led to AO3's creation. What's easy to forget now, even for those of us whose first fandom experiences were on Usenet eight million years ago, is that AO3 has been wildly successful in ways no one at the time foresaw. (Skip to the bottommost post, by Ellen Fremedon.) Prior to AO3, it was common for people to post fic primarily or even solely to LJ. That had a lot to do with how hoppin' LJ was socially.

But the Archive of Our Own is just that: an archive. It's not a blogging platform, and there are no fora. So when the fic migrated to AO3, the rest of fandom moved onto Twitter, Tumblr, and eventually Discord.

Designers consider affordances: "properties of objects which show users the actions they can take." Good design lets users understand at a glance what they're meant to do with the tool/furniture/website before them; skilled designers can use this to steer people through the environments they create, profoundly influencing their behavior. It's both cool as hell and kind of scary to think about. Anyway. The affordances on Tumblr and Twitter are designed to maximize user interaction.

Retweeting and reblogging are super-easy and essential to the function of the sites. Liking is as easy as possible; commenting is as easy as possible; navigating on either site is hopelessly chaotic, but not knowing where the fuck you're gonna end up doesn't seem to stop anybody from tag-surfing. It's not just that everything is public on Twitter and Tumblr; it's more than that, almost hyper-public. People often liken conversations on these sites to talking to your friends in a public park—usually so that they can compare visitors engaging with their content to strangers accosting them in said park and interrupting. But there really is no comparison.

And that's before you even get to the algorithms these sites employ specifically to encourage conflict, because conflict generates more engagement than concord, and engagement is how the sites make money.

In days of yore, much of this would be rendered moot by the existence of friends-lock, and a lot more by the absence of reblogs/retweets. What constituted a community was much clearer on LJ or DW than it is on Twitter or Tumblr; as a result, boundary etiquette generally was, too. Currently, Discord replicates a lot of the community and conversation functions that LJ once did, but since it has no individual blogging/microblogging space, fandom still needs social media.

The closest thing to comms on those media are hashtags. Even discounting tag spamming/trolling/hate-reading, people interested in a given hashtag are a lot more likely to disagree about key fandom issues than people interested in the same LJ community.

And if they disagree, do they have an obligation not to talk to each other? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they'll have a much nicer day if they don't, but I don't think it's inherently wrong or in all cases rude to do it. Some people go out of their way to make sure it's rude in the extreme, but strangers engaging with other strangers' content, even negatively, are literally doing what the site is designed to get them to do.

So yeah, fans who bang their shipwank up on sites specifically designed to get their content in front of as many eyeballs as possible and then shriek bloody murder about how reblogging something to disagree with it is exactly like somebody breaking into their living room are being… unreasonable. They are setting themselves up for outrage. They are demonstrating extremely poor boundaries. They are a throbbing, hemorrhoid pain in our collective ass. But I kind of feel for them, because I think a lot of what's happening is that they unconsciously miss the clarity and boundaries that things like comms and f-lock used to provide, even (maybe especially) the generation that was never even on LJ.

Once upon a time, fans were not any more mature or less hateful than they are today, but they mostly interacted with each other on sites with affordances that created some environmental boundaries that could be readily understood and took a bit more brashness to override. Now everyone has to bring those boundaries to the table themselves, and honestly, it's completely predictable that a large proportion would fail.

Internal boundaries: when (not) to argue on the internet

Since a large proportion of them are going to fail, if you want to have a nice time, you will have to do better.

As social beings, there are all kinds of internal boundaries we need to establish and observe. I don't feel remotely equal to giving any much advice about most of them. Here are my personal rules for getting into (and out of) fights on the internet instead.

Again, I don't think it's necessarily wrong or even rude to dispute with someone (and I think some of the times when it's rude, it's still right). So I won't advise anyone never to fight on the internet, but I try to follow two rules: 1) Think carefully about the fights you pick. 2) Walk away after you've said what you came to say.

The payoff can't be something that comes from another person. Particularly if you're arguing with someone across a major divide of some kind, you are not ever going to change their mind and it's unlikely you'll change the minds of their social group. Not that way. If you're going to do it, do it because:

you want to clarify your own thoughts.

you want to make a point to onlookers who aren't already polarized.

you want catharsis.

you care a lot about saying it.

If your motivation is catharsis, really weigh the payoff against the emotional costs of conflict. I mean, do that anyway, but especially if you're wading into something because you think it will make you feel better. In the short term, at least, it probably won't.

Whatever your reason for participating in the argument, once you've said the part that was important to you, stop there. You don't have to keep going just because someone responds. Opening your mouth does not create an obligation for you to keep engaging—not even with someone you addressed directly.

I think walking away is harder than not getting involved in the first place, because most of us have internalized that once we insert ourselves, we have to stick around. We feel like the fact that people are upset with us means we're responsible for that, and thus that we owe them something. But we don't. Not only can you walk away whenever it suits you, but you should. Be open to the possibility that any anger you've incurred is warranted, but if you're careful about step one, your conscience should stay fairly quiet.

This is the part that requires you to enforce the boundaries you've set for yourself. Are people shitposting about you? Yep, they're apt to. Are they twisting your words, making ad hominem attacks, speculating about your motives and getting them wrong? Yeah, they're gonna do that, too. Are they bragging about how they clearly destroyed you, since you haven't said a word since they returned fire? Let them. If you ever want to get of the carousel, sooner or later you're going to have to shut up and leave them to it; better it be right after you've said the thing you wanted to say than after you've said a bunch of things that you never really did because you got sucked in.

Practice it. Practice walking away from the conflict. Practice saying what you want despite knowing it's assailable; practice blocking people when you're done and letting them call you a coward because of it. Practice by fucking off and reading a nice book, or writing a nice fic, or making a nice meal. Practice switching mental gears, because that is not an ability most of us get for free. It's a learned skill.

Speak to satisfy yourself. Because any time you get angry at a stranger on the internet, the only resolution to that feeling you will ever experience will come from your end.

That is true of a lot of real-life situations where the person you're angry at is not a stranger, as well. It shouldn't be, but it is. Particularly when you are experiencing systemic injustice of some kind, there will often be sharp limits to the practical redress you can extract from a company, government, other power structure, or individual within that power structure. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't work for change, but if you're going to do it, you'll need to husband your mental and emotional resources for the fights that matter.

Spötterdämmerung: Twilight of the Gits

I have no idea if it's your only fandom, but since you've mentioned ships with its characters and you evidently follow this blog, I assume you're in Supernatural fandom. SPN is one of the biggest, best-established, and most transformatively productive fandoms out there; it ain't gonna evaporate overnight. It may well be one of those fandoms that never dies at all. But it will contract.

It already is. People drift away to other things; networks reshape themselves; communities slow down, consolidate, shutter. It can be melancholy for sure, but I prefer to think of it as a renaissance, as people trying out new interests and getting excited about new stories. And another major bonus: it tends to get way less wanky.

There's always a wank bubble when series end, but the thing about bubbles is they don't last forever. Eventually, the loudest voices lose interest as they lose relevance, and things calm down. Usually what's left is a quieter place where, yeah, maybe it's not quite the hectic pace it used to be, but mostly the folks who've stuck around have done so because they care more about the story than the adrenaline rush they can get from stirring shit.

Point is, you're in the market for stuff that's more fun and acquaintances who don't drive you crazy, and this is actually a really opportune time to find some. Things are already in flux; define yourself and your space any way you want.

In sum:

pick your battles

back-button and bitch in private

accept that not everyone will like you

practice saying, "Screw you, I do what I want" at odd times of the day

get better friends

screw haters, do what you want

[windwardstar]

How to write otoha kuroki 

Or: this is actually a really good way of nailing down a character and boiling them down to their essential parts.

Inspired by @writer-and-artist27   and helping each other to write the characters

First off:

Otoha uses they/them/their pronouns when writing in english. Doesn't describe themself in terms of either binary gender and doesn't use gendered terms or pronouns for themself.

Otoha is basically an a posteriori character. They started with the basis of a fully formed human as a starting point for their life and weren't formed whole-cloth from nothing. So basically, Otoha is an extrapolation of my own experiences. Specifically if we took all the maladaptive coping strategies (aka survival in a fucking chaotic house) and then put the character /back/ into an environment where they were adaptive. (Aka: ptsd keeping you alive when people are constantly trying to kill you but being a real inconvenience in the supermarket.)

There is also a significant presence of "this would be funny, cool, going with the motif I created for the character, I have an idea and I'm gonna write it because this story is indulging the plot bunnies and inspiration to write first and foremost."

Ok so Otoha 

They are utterly ruthless. They will do anything to achieve their goals. The social norms of the world around them are a structure to play within if they need to, but aren't exactly something they take into account unless it affects their goals. They will do whatever it takes to survive. 

They are driven. They tackle a goal with single minded determination. If they decide they are going to do something, they will do it.

This means that they excel at what they do. They expect perfection from themself. They expect slightly less perfection from others. After all, when failure means death, that's a big incentive.

Otoha is basically made up of survival mode. They got rid of the whole connecting with their emotions thing. Which basically means they're a high strung ball of anxiety who likes to pretend they're /fine/. Showing emotion is weakness and weakness gets you killed.

They're not bothered by the killing and violence part of their job. That shit's familiar. It's easy. Just kill the other guy before he kills you.

Otoha is a fucking hypocrite when it comes to the whole "konoha has shit mental health and people need to talk about their feelings so they don't become consumed by them." They'll encourage others to deal with things in a healthy way but pretend their own shit doesn't exist.

The only thing keeping them from being the next big bad is that they have a very very strong sense of right and wrong. And that means not hurting others. (Killing people as part of their job falls under "it's not murder if it's war and you're both wearing uniforms.) They are absolutely devoted to the people they consider family.

Their goals: survive, ensure kei survives, ensure tomoko survives, ensure the characters orbiting those two survive, (so that they can accomplish their goals of improving canon), work in the background to help ensure kei and tomoko can make the changes. Don't get caught. Don't get noticed. You're there to ensure things go right.

They view the naruto world as fiction. It's all made up. Nobody there is actually real. Maybe they're not even real. But kei and tomoko are. And those two treat the world as real, so Otoha is going to help them. They're slowly learning they can make changes that neither tomo or kei made in their stories and that it's ok. This is generally coupled with tying that to the few people otoha views as "real" rather than "background character" (aka otoha helping their genin team) and which otoha knows will affect the plot later (the whole hyuga clan thing).

Which is basically all a fancy way of saying otoha conceptualizes their existence as an extension of the plot. They're there to help things work out for the protagonists. They're not really a person. Nobody around them is really. They exist to be whatever they need to be.

They're still themself. That is something they clung to though. They had a strong sense of identity before and that's what got them through things then. So, they use that and the lessons they had learned to get through it now. They don't think of themself as two distinct people (os from earth and otoha from naruto). They are a continuation.

They think in English. This started out because they needed a language to think in and not knowing Japanese meant that they stuck to what they knew. Then it became a security measure. And it stuck. They were able to use it as a code. 

They technically speak Japanese with an american English accent. It raises eyebrows. So that's also a reason they tend not to speak as much.

They translate everything. One of the reasons Otoha doesn't speak a lot or only around people they know well is because the formality system is just fucking exhausting to deal with and they stick with one register most of the time. They use echolalia a lot because it's easier than input+mostly automatic translation>formulate response> actively translate>speak. (Also see the point above about being constant anxiety and survival mode. That makes speaking at all harder.) Japanese is a second (technically more than a second but we'll ignore that) language for them.

They are fond of their parents. They raised otoha. They were kind. But they were also gone a lot bein' ninja and all and Otoha tried to be dependant on them for as little as possible. And then when they became ninja, even less.

They're also still autistic. And hypersensitive to basically everything. Including chakra. Think of it like being able to see lights from a distance or feel static. It's an ability to feel something that is there rather than something like sonar which is deciphering the presence of something by the way something else reacts to it (sound waves bouncing around).

They're really really good at ignoring pain and physical limits. They did it in their past life and continue to do it in their present.