#merriauthor ocs

[askmerriauthor]

Merriweather:

Selfless to a self-destructive degree. "Oh, don't worry, I'm perfectly fine. I can handle it. Can I help you with something? [violently coughs up blood and tries to keep a straight face]. Merri has built her entire persona and life around being the rock that others can anchor themselves to. She doesn't know how to ask for help and is loathe to attempt it. She NEEDS to be able to help and serve others in order to feel like her existence has meaning. When she doesn't have someone else to care for in some manner, she doesn't take care of herself any better either. She's willing to sacrifice all comforts and care at the drop of a hat, and covers up how much it might be hurting her in the long term because she doesn't want to worry others.

Briefly suicidal based on her emotional reliance on the above. Whenever she's felt as if she's hitting her absolute limit and can't do anything to help others anymore, the intrusive thought of "I can at least do one last thing" sneaks in. During her career in military service, Merri has thrown herself into the direct line of lethal harm twice rather than let someone come to harm. Not because that was the only option at hand and a noble sacrifice had to be made, but because she felt it was the best way she could at least go out protecting someone and not having to live with being unable to serve her function afterward. She survived both instances, barely, with both events leaving her body permanently disabled in various ways and suffering induced acrophobia. The second instance was in the immediate lead-up to her being forced to retire from military service for her own good.

Merri DOES NOT process her feelings in a healthy manner. Bottle that shit up, shove it in a corner, pretend it's not there. She's got better things to focus on, like helping everyone else with their problems. Multiple near-death experiences? Battlefield PTSD? Having her entire lifestyle, career, and personal identity upended while pregnant and alone? Failed romantic relationships and public scandals? Intense fear of failing others and losing those she cares about? Not dealing with it.

Merri was willing to die for others. Not anymore. She's become a mother and loves her son with every fiber of her being, and that intense, unconditional love can be a very dangerous thing. So long as she believes her son needs her, she won't let herself come to harm because that would hurt him and make him mourn. Similarly, she won't allow anything to harm him. While this sounds like a good thing, it has an extreme outcome. Merri spent her entire life prior in military service, working directly under royalty, intensely proud of her role in protecting the nation. Presently? Merri would raze the entire country to the ground without hesitation or regret if it meant keeping her son safe. She has one answer to the Trolley Problem and it sucks for the other people on the tracks.

The Witch:

Like TB, it'd be a far shorter endeavor to list her good qualities. The Witch is a bad person, both in that she's a villain and that she's just a really shitty, awful person to have in your life. There's a big reason The Witch is always depicted as some sort of cryptid in every AU on par with a natural disaster or eldritch horror; she's a fucking monster.

The Witch does not believe that everyone is inherently good, but that they're inherently selfish and only do good things to further their own ends at some instinctive level. She expects the worst of everyone and, whenever someone tries to develop some kind of relationship with her, will intentionally orchestrate situations to push them into a breaking point just so she can say "See, I told you so" or "Look what you made me do".

The Witch had an adopted daughter who lived with her until adulthood. The Witch's behavior turned her daughter into a manipulative sociopath who continued the same pattern of mental abuse on others in her life. The Witch technically didn't do it on purpose, but is just such an innately awful person that it was inevitable. She then blamed her daughter for their falling out and stalked her under a false persona for years, deceiving her daughter and becoming a part of her "liberated" life under that fake identity. All while simultaneously antagonizing her as her true identity, further driving her daughter to be emotionally dependent on her false persona for comfort and protection.

The Witch always acts to twist situations to her own ends and manipulate others so she can always work from a position of power. She does this because, when the chips are down, she's a coward. She doesn't take responsibility for her own actions while demanding others always own up to what they do or be judged for it. When fully pressed to the absolute limits in her lore, she abandoned her own convictions and ran to save her own skin. It didn't work.

There was a moment during her living as a false persona and stalking her daughter that she had a genuine "Come to Jesus" moment. She tried to turn everything around and undo some of the harm she'd caused. It lasted exactly as long as it took for the first setback and resistance to her efforts to arise before she instantly abandoned her new outlook and quadrupled down on being fucking terrible. From that point on she continued to do horrible things, but with a new attitude of self-righteousness about it, which is honestly way worse than just being insufferably cynical.

What "toxic traits" do your characters have? Personality quirks or flaws that are potentially harmful or create conflict? Things that have lost them friends or made them enemies? Things that hurt their loved ones?

[askmerriauthor]

Inspired by this poll here. Bonus points for your idea on how things might shake out.