#as if people can feel their social power slipping and go into this defensive/aggressive mode to feel in power again

[inadeepanddarkdecember]

42 questions meme: 6 - 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 26, 30, 32, 33, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42. Why are you so emo Cy 👀👀👀

development questions

6. What are they like in motion–in different environments, and in different activities? What causes the differences between these?

Answered here!

Bonus: in seadweller au, he’s more alert and twitchy, always watching and scanning for anything new or different in his environment.

7. How do they physically engage with other people, inanimate objects, and their environment? What causes the differences between these?

I had a long, thought out answer to this, but it got deleted, so here’s the short version: he doesn’t physically engage with people or his environment. Even with people he likes, it’s still rare for him to initiate contact. In most environments, he’s always pulling his limbs in and trying to take up the least amount of space possible. In places he’s comfortable, he’ll let himself spread out more. Typically, he’s not a twitchy or fiddly person, so he doesn’t engage with inanimate objects much outside their intended use, whatever that may be. He’s pretty careful with most things and can be trusted with delicate equipment.

8. Where and when do they seem most and least at ease? Why? How can you tell?

Answered here!  

Bonus: in royalty au, when he’s uneasy, he doesn’t telegraph that angry energy to anywhere near the same extent, unless he’s in a particularly foul mood. It’s present, but far more subtle, depending on his age.

9. How do they manifest energy, exhaustion, tension, or other strong emotions?

When he’s excited and/or energized, he gets more restless; he’s unused to the energy he feels under his skin and doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He walks faster; he’s more alert and responds more readily to any novel stimulus with quick sharp motions; he shifts his weight around a lot; his eyes open a bit wider. Sometimes, he’ll tap his finger on his thigh, and he talks faster, more jaggedly with quick stops and starts.

Between his depression and thalassemia, exhaustion is often his usual state. He’s still, and either unreactive or moody, depending on the day. He doesn’t like to walk or go anywhere or stand or do anything; he just lets himself melt into any chair or bed or comfy thing. He curls up and sleeps virtually anywhere. He’s even quieter than usual and typically wants to do nothing but watch tv and movies.

Tension, if born of fear or anxiety, makes him very, very still, but if it’s born of anticipation or anger, he gets twitchy. In the latter case, he paces; he gestures more; he fidgets and taps his fingers. Tension gathers mostly in his shoulders, neck, and hands.

10. What energizes and drains them most?

Answered here!  

Bonus: in royalty au, he occasionally needs time away from the court to just be a person. His tolerance for socializing is much, much higher, but he can’t tolerate being a public figure in the presence of other aristocrats or even servants indefinitely. Every so often, he needs to become anonymous for a even a few hours to recharge.

11. How are they vocally expressive? What kind of voice, accent, tones, inflections, volume, phrases and slang, and manner of speaking do they use?

Cyrus is soft-spoken; he can have difficulties speaking loud enough to be heard in a noisy environment. Even when he’s being cruel or angry, he won’t raise his voice unless the other person does first. There’s a slight breathiness to his voice that blurs the sounds of his words together. He doesn’t drop letters much, speaking properly in that regard. Most of the time, he’s relatively monotonous; he doesn’t vary pitch or tone much and there’s no notable musicality to his voice. It’s more of an even hum. He speaks in short sentences without much flourish, whatever will get the point across most directly. Being American from the west coast, he has an American accent. He’s not very formal when he talks and doesn’t use much slang.  

12. How are they bodily expressive? How do they use nonverbal cues such as their posture, stance, eyes, eyebrows, mouths, and hands?

Answered here!

Bonus: in seadweller au, Cyrus’s antennae are a major clue to his mood. They curl, flatten, droop, and perk all in accordance with his feelings.

15. What kind of inner life do they have — rich and imaginative? Calculating and practical? Full of doubts and fears? Does it find any sort of outlet in their lives?

His inner life tends to vary between three main modes: defense, thoughtful, and absent. He can be quite anxious. A decent number of his aggressive behaviors are rooted in fear; they’re a preemptive reaction to assumptions he’s making about the situation or person at hand. He’s often on look out for threats and intrusions; especially around new people he always watches, evaluates, and reevaluates.

But when he’s alone and not so defensive? His thoughts meander. He watches the world and evaluates, seeing what catches his eye. Though he’s not much of a storyteller, he imagines better worlds and different people and he’s always paying attention to the less noticed things and watching how the light hits the earth, even when he doesn’t have his camera on him. He still likes to imagine what an ideal photo might look like, how he might edit it, etc.

Sometimes, though, his mind slips into a blank. Often when he’s at the hospital or anywhere else there’s little to do, he just drifts off and thinks about a whole lot of nothing. It’s the only way he’s learned to tolerate long waiting periods.  

17. Are they more shaped by nature or nurture — who they are, or what has happened to them? How have these shaped who they’ve become as a person?

Nurture, no question. His past is vitally important to who Cyrus is today and it vastly informs how he thinks and believes and reacts to things. In some aus, if his past is changed enough, I have to ask if he even becomes Cyrus, that’s how distinct he is from James, the person he was born as. It’s easier to list commonalities between the two than differences: a few of the things essential to his nature are his quiet shyness, his caution, and his straightforwardness. (But even these traits become more or less salient in certain aus.)

18. What kind of person could they become in the future? What are some developmental paths that they could take, (best, worst, most likely?) what would cause them to come to pass, and what consequences might they have? What paths would you especially like to see, and why?

Answered here!  

20. What kind of individual relationships do they have with others, and how do they behave in them? How are they different between intimate relationships like friends, family, and lovers versus more impersonal relationships?

How intimate a relationship is makes all the difference for Cyrus. With family, he’s always tense and ready to fight; he’ll sometimes pick fights just to see them upset, since he doesn’t have much to lose. With strangers, he just wants to be left alone with a big berth of personal space, and he’ll be an asshole to get that. With friends, he relaxes. He’ll let them near him and touch him, though he’ll rarely initiate contact himself. He smiles; he jokes; he talks more. He’ll seek them out and share things he likes, but he can still be secretive and defensive. It’s with lovers and friends that have reached essentially that level that he proves himself kind of needy. He still needs time to himself and can still be picky about how and when he’s touched, but he’ll seek out attention and touch far more often. (He’s a terrible lap thief.)

21. What kind of relationships do they tend to intentionally seek out versus actually cultivate? What kind of social contact do they prefer, and why?

Answered here!  

Bonus: in his deity verse, he has a particular interest in immortal dreaming entities, disdaining them far less than mortals.

26. How do they view and feel about relationships, and how might this manifest in how they handle them, if it does?

I feel like anyone who has been paying attention to this blog for any length of time already knows the answer to this question: Cyrus thinks relationships are a fast track to pain. Opening up, vulnerability, affection, it’s all just a mistake and gives someone else far too much power to hurt you. He thinks all his relationships will inevitably end in pain because he’s such an awful, intolerable person and 99% of people are also awful and hurtful, which is part of why he so strongly resists making any friends and always puts his worst foot forward when interacting with someone new, always suppressing his intense loneliness and desire for closeness and affection. Even when someone earns his affections, he’s still very slow to open up and willing to lie if pushed too hard, always distrusting and testing and retesting the waters, and the more he believes in someone, the more his shitty self-esteem tends to kick in as he values them over himself, though that’s a less visible effect.

30. What is their preferred level of activity and stimulation? How do they cope if they get either too little or too much?

Cyrus is someone who’s accustomed to a pretty low level of stimulation; he doesn’t have a bar for understimulation. He’s very accustomed to plenty of boredom from long hospital visits, and when there’s little to do and little to pay attention to, he just zones out and/or falls asleep. And honestly? His preferred level of stimulation isn’t much higher. He very much likes quiet, empty places. He’s not very active; he doesn’t like rushing or running, so just an interesting place he can explore at his own place is about as much as he needs. This is why he likes spending time in the library, cafes, or in parks. There’s just enough going on for him to watch if he wants, but typically, it’s quiet and he’s left to his own devices.

Overstimulation is an easy place to reach. Too much sound, too much speed, too many people, all can overwhelm him pretty quick; he encounters this a lot while on the bus or walking places, which is part of why he’s always listening to music, to drown it out. School too is guilty of this. When he’s overstimulated, it gets harder for him to think; his mood whiplashes a bit more; and he’s not as capable of processing what’s around him and can get anxious. During celebrations (for example), if he genuinely wants to be there, he’ll sometimes ignore the stress of overstimulation, but that usually results in him being far more sensitive to all sorts of stimulation for several days after.

32. Do they have any “props” that are a significant part of their life, identity, activities, or self-presentation somehow? What are they, how are they used, and why are they so significant? How would these props’ absence impact them, how would they compensate, and why?

Things Cyrus very often carries with him includes: camera, scuffed up mp3 with cheap ear buds, shitty flip phone, wallet (contents: id, debit card, library card, medical emergency card, several cafe punch cards, a few crumpled bills, and loose change), and housekeys. If he has his backpack with him, he might also carry snacks, books/dvds, a water bottle, and (if he thinks he’ll be out long enough to need them) pills. For most of the year, he also wears a hoodie.

None of these are props essential to his identity or presentation; all of it is practical. He’s not the sort of sentimental person to waste pocket space on things he doesn’t need. Consequently, the absence of these things causes practical troubles. Without his hoodie, he feels cold often, but also exposed since he’s so used to wearing it. Without his camera, he misses out on photography opportunities. Without his mp3, he’s more bored and more easily bothered by loud environments. Etc etc.

33. How do they learn about the world–what is their preferred learning style? Hands-on learning with trial and error? Research, reading, and note-taking? Observation or rote memorization? Inductive or deductive reasoning? Seeking patterns and organization? Taking things apart and putting them back together? Creative processing via discussing, writing about, or dramatizing things?

If you asked him, he would say he learns best through independent reading and researching, and he does learn quite well that way. However, the fact of the matter is that he learns best through discussion and observation. His watchful nature serves him well here: he can catch little details and process them quickly, and talking things out also helps him a lot. Generally, his most efficient learning style is skewed toward the auditory. He’s weakest with anything that requires rote memorization; if it has lots of seemingly arbitrary details or steps, he’s going to forget. Being left to trial and error is also excessively frustrating for him; he had precious little patience for making many mistakes as a way to understand anything.

37. Have they had any special education or training that colors their means of learning about or understanding the world? Conversely, do they lack some kind of education considered essential in their world? What kind of impact has this addition or lack had on them?

Not particularly? A lot of Cyrus’s education has been pretty standard public school stuff. He’s learned things from friends, and he’s learned a lot through library binges. He’s gained a lifetime’s worth of specialized medical knowledge as concerns the various aspects of his conditions, and that keeps him aware of things that would be good or bad for his heath, making his choice more deliberate when he chooses to avoid or indulge in something that might be dangerous for him. One could argue his abuse counts for this, in which case it entirely shapes his understanding of the world. Lessons he’s taken from that are things like, “People are inherently selfish.“ “Kindness has ulterior motives.“ “Vulnerability leads to pain.“ In turn, this has resulted in his notably poor social skills and added an extra difficulty to forming any sort of positive relationship.

39. What sort of questions or thoughts recur in their lives, either specifically or as a theme? Why are these never answered, or answered permanently to their satisfaction?

The two big ones are “Why am I still alive?” and “How did things get to be this way?” in a bigger, global sense. He’s very fond of studying history to see how humans reached their current point and why certain events/changes occurred. Generally, periods of upheaval. It’s a large question with an even larger answer, and while he has an answer in “humans are fundamentally terrible”, understanding that in a more concrete and better informed way is an endless, infinite task. As for the question concerning himself and his place in things, so long as depression and self-loathing cloud his perception, he will never be able to find an answer that makes any sense to him or feels worthwhile.

40. What do they wonder about? What sparks their curiosity and imagination, and why? How is this expressed, if it is?

Answered here!

Bonus: Magic is his New Favorite Thing in vampire verse, and he pursues knowledge about it relentlessly and eagerly.  

41. What associations do they bring to mind? Words or phrases, images, metaphors or motifs? Why?

I’m just going to list these off stream-of-consciousness: ocean, blue, loneliness, stubbornness, anger, hidden, foggy, lethargy, watchful, cat, futility, emptiness, quiet, depression, cerebral, reflective, antagonistic, blood, hurt, cold. Leave me alone. Don’t touch me. I don’t understand. Resignation, worn down, solitude, battle, brave, strong, independent, dependent, struggling, suspicion, paranoia, hospital rooms, silence, thunderstorms, toxicity.

All of this is rather well represented in his aesthetic tag. Largely, the list is feelings and traits he feels and/or expresses often alongside things he likes that are like him (ocean, cats, storms). I also associate him with the idea of the American dream, as a living example of all the ways it can go awry and cause so much pain for those who get caught up in it and those around them..

42. I have a question of my own:Why are you so emo Cy 👀👀👀            

Ahem, let me put on my very best Cyrus voice for this one:

“Because of fucks like you.“

[mtanu]

You Are An INFP

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