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agent-kentauris · 8 years ago

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Did one of those character development ask things for Michael, and boy was that difficult. I think I have a lot more to do to make him a better character, but I’m working on it. Anyways, thought I would post this. Be warned: it’s long.

questions source

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

No siblings!

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

One of love and trust, though he often chaffed at his mother’s reluctance to set any sort of disciplined boundaries. More of a throw seven dozen activities at you and see which one sticks kind of approach. Which when things got tangly would just lead to him sitting around refusing to do anything, and her ramping up the activities. Mom does not sign the report cards. Very perceptive when it comes to her son, but more of an Intelligence skill check than a Wisdom one. Has lots of parenting books, and when she got really mad, those came out. Does have lines in the sand – no swearing, he’d better practice French, you don’t have to like family time but you will be there, extracurriculars, chores, college.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

Dad was the discipline parent, so even though he’s happier with structure, this one was slightly more turbulent. If people were verballing duking it out, it was them. Which, because his dad believed firmly in respect your parents, often got Mikey in trouble. Dad was less line in the sand, more quicksand patches you could get over if you were careful. Which Mikey quickly learned, like most kids, how to exploit. Dad’s order and discipline tempered by him actually being a softie, has to work hard behind the scenes to not overindulge Mikey. This occasionally led to him being a bit too hard on the poor kid. He would really get behind ron swanon’s don’t half ass two things, whole ass one thing mentality, but he tends to let Mom take the reigns on Michael’s school and extracurricular schedule. A good deal in part because he does not look forward to fights with her about that topic. He usually loses, even when he wins. Wisdom over intelligence. Michael comes to him before his mother with questions about friends and later on, coworkers, because he’s got good instincts about people. He was strongly, vocally, politically opposed to Michael’s career choices, and after the incident during mikey’s first internship, wanted to try and ban him from going for it again, but cooler heads – read: mom – prevailed. Still, he ended up proud of what Michael was (trying) to do. What of it he was told, at any rate.

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

Walked in on his dad trying to hold his mother and stop her from shaking during the aftermath of 9/11. They’d done their best to focus on the positives happening and conceal from him just how unsettled and frightened they’d been by the actions of some of their neighbors. Start of what later developed into his interest in current career. They didn’t know he saw it, and he never told them.

Mina’s larger mission

Events in Alpha Protocol I can’t talk about because I haven’t written them yet, but I promise I know what they are.

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

Well, if this was just an average day off work, usually only a wallet, phone, and keys. Sometimes loose change and receipts he didn’t bother to put back in his wallet.

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams?

He’s not particularly good at remembering dreams

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

Getting lost

Misremembered memories

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

HHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAyes.

If you mean ever, a small squirrel. His dad tried to take him hunting, though he wasn’t particularly fond of it.

If you mean person, that would be Unnamed Dude Number 5 during the internship incident. He missed, though, so there’s that.

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

Different, but not noticeably much one way or the other. His parents ran a business, and it did okay. Seemings as the CIA website will just flat out tell you any fact you might wish to know, the internet informs me that he’ll still be okay. The boy ain’t never been super broke, is the point, and I doubt he’s ever going to be super rich.

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

That depends. If he’s talking to other people, he likes to be in something, not that he ever seems to care what it looks like (glares). But like a lot of people, home is a different matter.

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

Dad calling him in the middle of class saying his mother was in the hospital, car crash and they didn’t know if she was going to make, and that he sent him a plane ticket and that he needed to get home right now

Parts of Alpha Protocol that haven’t happened

In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

Parts of Alpha Protocol that haven’t happened

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

Not really, no. Except that it signifies someone’s got an injury that needs to be taken care of.

Does your character remember names or faces easier?

Faces. Canonically.

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

Not really, though if I had to say one or the other it would be material possessions. His ambitions lie elsewhere and neither money nor material possessions have ever helped. Plus, his family and friends never did, and he never really absolutely needed either.

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

Success

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

As a child child, blocks and Spirograph

Magnets

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others?

Wisdom, by several factors

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

Interwoven manipulation and self-justification of said manipulativeness

Oh yes it has. A fairly serious romantic relationship, in fact

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

Objectively, based on the results of other’s missions and stats and so on, for the purpose of (usually positive) self-criticism.

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

That depends on when we are. At the start of Alpha Protocol, I’d say he’s more inclined to first think he was responsible, and then check if it’s true and if not, then, who? By the end, he probably internally believes he’s caused/deserved it, even if it isn’t true, while externally blaming others and trying hard to believe that. He’s a pretty fair person, though.

What does your character like in other people?

Empathy for those around them

Straightforwardness

Durability

What does your character dislike in other people?

Self-serving ambition

Indecisiveness

Inconsistency

How quick is your character to trust someone else?

Too damn fast. Especially for a spy.

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

Naturally, too fucking slow. With training, tolerable fast. After Alpha Protocol, that’s going to depend on how bad things end up getting. Does this change if he is close with that person? Of course, he gets like five times slower. Stop trusting people. It’s annoying.

How does your character behave around children?

He likes them, but he tends to treat them like children, which, what kid has ever liked that? The depths of hell to which children will stoop constantly surprises him, no matter how many times he’s seen or remembers evidence of it.

How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

Resorts to training, and responses vary wildly depending on the situation and the desired outcome.

When not in the field, he tends to avoid unnecessary confrontations. If it’s inevitable, whichever way is the least likely to draw attention, be it the quickest or the get someone else in trouble-y-est or so on. If there’s already a spotlight, and there absolutely no way out has to has to be a confrontation, then whatever’s quickest or whatever’s going to get him back to one of the first two ifs as soon as possible.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

He’ll do it if it’s the fastest method to end the confrontation. If he’s really, really mad, then a hell of a lot quicker. In fact, if you seriously piss him off bad enough, which is pretty hard to do, its going to be a question of how serious the damage is, not how fast he decides to cause it.

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

He wanted to be a travel writer

I suppose in a highly technical sense he both travels and writes, so…

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

Henry Leland

I’m sorry. That was automatic

Queen ants, artichokes, bananas

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

Falling asleep in the back of a staff lounge with a container of crappy takeout food next to him on the table and a stack of finished paperwork that just needs to be read over one more time sometime in the next day before receiving a new assignment and people in the front talking quietly over the (positive) news report they’re watching

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

When he knows something is very wrong but he simply cannot figure out what or why

For example, if someone who never uses capital letters texts him and adds a capital I, maybe, or capitalizes the first word in a sentence. Is it a message? An accident? Is something wrong? Double worse if he’s by himself and can’t ask anyone.

Like with Surkov

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

Willing to improve, provided its actual criticism

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

Apparently canonically I’m working with the first of these two, because no fewer than three no, actually, four of your plans involving walking right up to the Big Bad Place that contains the Big Bad Person, and multiple of those plans involves the actual idea that this is the best way to get to Big Bad Person. And, since this never turns out well for you, I can’t imagine you count at the later kind of problem solver.

How does your character behave around people they like?

Affectionate. Calls/messages them a lot, likes talking with them. If he likes you, more inclined to listen and let you vent/rant/bubble than talk himself. Marginally more honest, when he can be. Will bother you with book recommendations and if he thinks you’ll really like one, will just go buy it for you. Do not fall into this trap. He will buy you more. And interrogate you about them and your opinions with the full force of intelligence training.

How does your character behave around people they dislike?

On a scale from coldly professional (esp if he needs something from them) → openly verbally antagonistic → removing/having removed said people from his life

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

What, you mean they aren’t the same things?

His status as an agent is forfeit, which he seems to accept in terms of status, but his honor as an agent he would be much more concerned over.

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

In face-to-face confrontations outside of work, the later. But, generally, everywhere, the former.

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

He got bit by a snake on a hike when he was younger. At the time, he – read:his best friend – thought it would be really cool to get a tattoo of a snake there, and he almost snuck out to do it, but didn’t

How does your character treat people in service jobs?

Good. If it’s a place he’s likely to be seen again, he doesn’t like talking and will avoid it, even if it makes him seem a little tiny bit hostile. But if not, he has fun inventing responses to small talk questions.

How are you? How did I come to be? Well, when the asteroid hit the field about twenty years back, I emerged from the center of the rock and took over the farm, gaining my intelligence and sense of self. And that’s how I came to be, how I am, so to speak.

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

Earn it

Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

Yeah, his extended uncle. They don’t talk as much as they used to after Michael’s dad died, and then CIA happened, and a couple years later, Alpha Protocol, but this is more Michael’s fault. His uncle would love to hear from him, though he’s always suspected (for true or not) that Mikey’s more deeply involved in his career than his parents wanted to believe, and so he has vague assumptions that are even more vaguely correct about why Mikey’s been too busy to swing by home. He hasn’t actuallyy been told by any sources, official or naw, that Michael is officially considered dead. Which is good, because instead Michael’s only a rogue enemy of the state being tracked down by legit killers and power-hungry ceos. Much more reassuring.

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

Incredibly easy for him. Me, though, I’m allergic to love apparently so I have a hard time writing him into situations where he can say it. He’s that kind of person who even tells his superfriends that. He doesn’t like saying it without meaning it, but he can. And has. And not just on that one mission.

What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

Well, his mother was a practicing Muslin until a few years after marrying Michael’s dad, and his father was Christian raised as a child but left that real fast, which causes a lot of tension between him and his family. They together raised Michael with semi-agnostic beliefs. Michael himself prefers not to think about it, though if asked he will self-ID as atheistic. Internally, he’s more of a mix between agnostic and atheistic. If he’s thinking about it, he assumes when you die that’s just it, akin to closing a book. I think if he sat down and really, really thought about it, he’d be more afraid of things never ending than things ending.

#one of the questions was #has your character ever fired a gun #well #good question #aptor michael thorton #oh i actually didn't have that tag until just now #huh #michael shoves books at you if he likes you #fun facts #i believe i technically say #he bothers you with book recommendations and will buy it for you if hes very serious #but same dif

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timhowe-blog1 · 7 years ago

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~ Being British in Bavaria ~

Prologue

‘So, let's just get this straight,’ begins Frau Gürtelmann, removing her spectacles and fixing me slap bang in the eyes with a studied, concentrated gaze.

‘In your application you said that you are PC literate, but it turns out you can't touch-type, you can't tell the difference between pdf and power point, and Frau Bichlbächer had to show you how to send her an email’.

That much is true. I had needed to ask her secretary how to send an email. It seems incredible that a means of communication which we take for granted nowadays was by no means bread-and-butter business back in 1998.

‘All you're able to do,’ continues Gürtelmann, ‘is open Word’.Looking for confirmation, lest she might have misidentified my true colours, she cocks her head: ‘Right so?’

I’d been tickled pink when, having just graduated the previous autumn, Deutsche Telekom instantly offered me a full-time position in its translating department. My first day on the job looked promising. I’d always considered myself to be a natural talent at journalism, and was delighted to be asked to translate press releases for the company’s English-language website. The first assignment involved a dispatch advertising a wake-up call service from glamour girl Verona Feldbusch. That’s roughly the German equivalent of Katie Price. As I handed my polished text to the department secretary I remarked ‘Gosh, and there are people prepared to pay good money for something like that’.

This off-hand remark must have found its way back to the boss, because the following morning I was removed from press translation and relegated to manning ‘the clippings cubicle’. This, I soon discovered, was the least popular duty in the whole department – one normally assigned to school pupils on work week. My instructions were to ‘fillet’ the daily Fachpresse, or specialist press, cut out everything to do with telecommunications and glue it into a scrapbook. I’d heard from former novices that new full-time entrants were also occasionally put to work on this peripheral assignment. But for just a day or two, before being moved on to more key, translation-based tasks. Apart from being released to translate the odd text whenever a colleague went sick, I remained in the newspaper clippings cubicle a whole month.

I should have taken the hint. Especially when the colleague responsible for keeping an eye on my efforts quietly handed me the Stellenangebote – situations vacant – from the Süddeutsche Zeitung and suggested I might start applying for other jobs. Things hadn't quite panned out as planned, it seemed. I was now being called into the boss's office for my first and, as it soon transpired, only progress report. And we weren’t even a third of the way into probationary period.

Frau Gürtelmann's damning appraisal of my practically non-existent PC skills is, alas, spot on. Humiliated and unable to return her gaze, I lower my eyes, bringing them to rest on a stain on the lacquered wood floorboards. Then, as if attempting to mitigate charges being brought against me, I look up and whimper ‘Yes, but I also copy and paste’.

On reflection, I'd possibly taken ‘PC literate’, buzzword of the time, rather too literally. I was, after all, literate and able to turn on a PC. Surely that sufficed, did it not? A simplistic but nonetheless reasonable line of thought in the days when social networking meant little more than writing out a cheque each year for Friends Reunited and mobile phones came bricklike, glued to a 12-inch antenna. As for connectivity and the Internet of Things, back in 1998 these were foreign words to me.

In my defence, I ought to explain that my ignorance of all things IT was not totally mea culpa. I am one of the so-called ‘lost generation’. The very year after I left school, Information Technology was introduced to the National Curriculum. The idea of ‘catching up’ on this essential life-skills subject was never mooted, however. Right through university and well into my first full-time teaching job in Britain it was not once suggested that a basic grasp of PC knowhow might possibly enhance my career prospects. Not even when I took my Diploma of Translating shortly before the Millennium was there any talk of computer literacy being de rigueur for those wishing to progress in this IT-driven profession. As a mature student, I was easily ten years older than most of my fellow peers – every single one of them PC literate, naturally.

Following the dressing down in Frau Gürtelmann’s office, I knuckle down at my laptop and endeavour to fix my shortcomings in the IT department. For starters, I take an Introduction to Word course at the local VHS, part of Germany’s excellent adult education network. I even buy an old typewriter for ten marks and teach myself touch-typing. Still, having made a dog’s dinner of my first job in Germany, probably the most sensible thing to do would right now would be to cut my losses and return to England. Although my first attempt at teaching in Britain hadn’t exactly been a crowning achievement, I probably should consider giving it another go. They’re desperately short of foreign language teachers in Britain, I speak French and German fluently and am appropriately qualified. I feel sure I could make a much better job of it second time round.

So why am I reluctant to return to Britain? More to the point, why am I so gung-ho on staying on here and making Germany my home? Twenty years later, and this is still one of the most frequent questions which Germans ask me. ‘Wie kommst Du hierher?’ They want to know what brought me here. This has always struck me as something of a strange question. I mean, why not ‘Lust auf Lovely Germany?’ That’s the title of a recent Spiegel magazine report on intra-EU migrants. It’s no accident that some 96,000 Brits currently live in Germany. The country enjoys a healthy economy, plenty jobs, a generous health and social care system and generally a much better climate than Britain. They brew a damn good beer here too, of course. These are typical reasons I give whenever Germans ask me how I ended up here. And they’re all part of the reason why I’m so happy to make this country my adopted home. What originally attracted me over here all those years ago, however, takes a little more explaining. Truth told, I fell in love with Germany quite by accident. And it was all thanks to a teenage magazine called Bravo.

Flashback to the early eighties. Growing up in the genteel Georgian city of Bath in Northeast Somerset, it’s unlikely that I would ever have become quite so fixated with Germany and the Germans, had it not been for Bravo. I discovered this popular youth magazine on an exchange trip to our partner town of Brunswick in 1982. It was the year that Deutsche Welle rocked not only the German charts. Splashed over the mag’s front page almost every week were names like Spider Murphy Gang, Hubert Kah and Trio. The latter even made it onto Top of the Pops in Britain.

Emailing, text messaging, WotsApping – none of all that had been invented back then. I don’t think we even had fax. Which is why letter writing, just shortly behind the telephone, was probably the most common form of communication between young people. And Bravo, like most youth magazines of the time, played a pivotal role in this process. I decided to write off to its pen pal page. Scribbled on the back of a blank postcard and accompanied by a simple black-and-white passport photo, my text read Engländer (18) sucht nette deutsche Brieffreunde/innen (Englishman seeks nice German penfriends, male or female).

I didn’t give the request a moment’s more thought until several weeks later when the postman rang our doorbell excitedly waving a fistful of letters from Germany and Austria. The senders were all female, aged 15 to 17 – a rather narrow target audience for any type of magazine. Not that this really mattered much to me at the time, of course. I was too busy sniffing scented envelopes, deliberating which one to open first. Up to 900 further letters flooded in over the course of the ensuing months, and for a brief period I even possessed my own sorting bag at the local town post office. I did my uttermost to reply to as many as I could. My sole precondition – acceptance criteria, so to speak – was that they enclose a pretty photo. Or at least promise to send one by return of post. Scented notepaper earned bonus points, sending me onto overdrive, as I fired off responses machine-gun style. If ever there was a schoolboy trailblazer to online dating I can proudly say I helped pioneer the project. And if letter writing was ‘in’ then I was right there at the cutting edge.

It soon transpired that this was a perhaps less than ideal way to be spending almost every moment of my freetime in my final year of school. And scribbling away in chaotic Denglish was possibly not the best preparation for my German exams either. Miraculously, I scraped through final examinations with a ‘B’ (History) and two ‘C’ grades (French and German). The latter, interestingly, was a very hard school subject in those days, and remains equally so. This might explain my rather disappointing grade in my most favourite subject. Only around 9% of British pupils actually learn German – and most happily abandon the subject by the age of 16. No wonder Brits refer to it as ‘niche’ subject. Whatever educational value I felt might be derived from corresponding with a substantial proportion of the female teenage population in Germany obviously failed to manifest itself in my exam results.

Having written as many letters as I could physically manage each night I would crawl into bed, collapsing alongside my plastic-clad transistor radio. I habitually sent myself to sleep with Berichte von heute, North German Radio's roundup of the day's news. How much I was able to follow invariably depended on the strength of the crackly short-wave signal. Each morning I would awaken to dulcet tones of Radio Luxemburg's Fröhlicher Wecker, aka Axel Fitzke. This slightly less cocky German version of the BBC's Chris Evans invited his Germany-based listeners, and probably his sole follower in the UK, to wallow in a grand pêle-mêle of Deutsche Schlager and Euro pop. The latter – smash hits from Brittany to Bucharest – despite being sung in relatively comprehensible, albeit rather nonsensical English, never seemed to chart in Britain, strangely enough. The line-up included stars with dubious-sounding names such as Gazebo, Secret Service and Joy. Not to be confused, of course, with the somewhat more sophisticated Police and Joy Division, which most of my peers were into back then. But if Germans were unashamed fans of banal euro pop then it was good enough for me too.

In my last year of school I was, needless to say, obsessed with all things German. When classmates were kicking a ball around the playground or, more likely, slouched on sofas in the sixth form centre, my ears would be glued to headphones in the language lab, fervently following the latest episode of BBC Schools' Deutsch für die Oberstufe, which Herr Lawson kindly recorded each week just for me – I seemed to be the only one interested.

Hence I spent my final school year specialising in the subjects I loved – foreign languages and history. The school careers advice centre, sadly, wasn’t the greatest of help in guiding me on what exactly to do with these subjects after school. Looking back, I should really have gone in for something more career-oriented, such as journalism or tourism management. Unsure what to do next, I was talked into doing a bone-dry, text-bookish Language and Linguistics degree course. I chose the University of Essex for one sole reason – the port of Harwich was just down the road, providing a convenient escape route to Germany. It was a few more years until no-frills airlines were to revolutionise the way we travelled abroad. For the time being it was the ferry for me.

Had you asked me, in those halcyon, pre-Brexit days, if I'd rather be German than British the answer would have been a resounding ‘Jaaaa!

This, then, is the story of my journey from Bath to deepest Lower Bavaria. And in this post-Brexit climate, an attempt to answer perhaps one of the toughest Anglo-German issues:

Can you really transform a Brit into a Bavarian?

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