#she'll never be a winning dog but we are genuinely just out here Having Experiences and Enjoying It and yknow

[fjordfolk]

I'm just really proud of her - like her results are nice and stuff but she's settling well in a hectic environment, she's focused in the ring and steady on the table, initiates contact with every person that comes within reach (without being rude) and just ignores all the dogs and ruckus. Doing this show season has been really affirming for us, and today was the best she's been so far.

[swtorramblings]

The pick a character and you'll share your opinion on top 5 things required to depict them thing: obviously Vaylin but also Senya and going to add Shara Jenn for good measure even though the fandom doesn't really use her but I'm still curious what you consider vital about her character.

Thank you.

Answer for Senya is here: Link

Well, all right, I can't shy away from a Vaylin ask. Mostly canon stuff here, but I think they should inform how she is written even if we throw out canon, which I'm going to be a bit more critical of than in the Senya answer.

She's deeply troubled. She was an emotionally volatile child, though I genuinely hope the idea wasn't some "born crazy" thing. She had too much power, a power that takes emotions and twists them if you're not careful, and she had them even before her brain was fully developed. I will never like how it was done, but I also don't think erasing her struggles is a good idea, even in stories where the decade of trauma is changed.

She certainly is a ball of rage and force lightning, but her emotions are more complex than just lashing out. She's sad about Thexan, and I think about her estrangement from her mother, though she would never admit that. She's afraid of losing what little self determination she's fought for. She feels betrayed, and has been, by pretty much everyone, though they may see it differently. Rage, though, is her only way to express all of that. She was never given the tools to do otherwise.

She's childish. Between her powers and her cage and her misspent youth, she never had a childhood. And she hates feeling that she missed something, so she rejects the detritus of childhood, like the bear. She still puts a big picture of Alderaan on her wall, though. It allows her to be hurt and manipulated.

I feel like she has strong feelings about what was done to her, and wouldn't want it to happen to others. I know this seems to fly in the face of the evidence, but I'm not saying that she acts on it. The people were experimented on because she was more afraid of being controlled that she was concerned with others. I think the GEMINI droids was a combination of wanting revenge against SCORPIO for betraying her and feeling that they had been abandoned by their "mother". One of Jarak's lovely little stories made me think that any empathy was burned out of her, but I think she still cares in her way at some level. Doesn't stop her from doing monstrous things, but that is just all the more tragic. In my stories, she generally gets to act on that feeling more, because reasons.

She is mostly without hope and possibly suicidal. She came down to Odesson not just because you double dog dared her, but also because she isn't really concerned with living. She shouts "not in this place", because she doesn't want to die on Nathema, not because she doesn't want to die. This is another of those things that, if handled better, might not have freaked me out quite so much. Like a lot of things, it's a part of life, so the story should be told, it's just one that needs great care to not be harmful. It could have been happy, that she makes it, or sad, that she doesn't, but instead it was enraging. That's not to say she needs to be forever without hope, she can fight back to gain slivers of it, but it's core to who she is to have that struggle, winning or losing it.

Shara Jenn, the amazing Watcher Two.

She's smart. I think she may be smarter even than most other Watchers, but that may just be bias. She processes data and draws conclusions more easily than other people. She should be pretty hard to fool or manipulate and have solid, though not infallible, plans for most everything. I don't think she gets to demonstrate that in game as much, and the next generation Watchers might be better at it than her, but she's still brilliant beyond ordinary humans.

She is genuinely a bit of a stickler for the rules, unlike how I view Elara. I think she'll break from procedure if she logically concludes it is necessary, but otherwise, even if they are inconvenient, I think she sticks to them. I think she should eventually change what rules she follows, but she'll still stick to the new ones.

She's loyal, though her loyalties are a bit unclear or in flux by Rishi. Yes, for most of her story, she is loyal to the Empire, but I think that during Rishi she should start to change. Her conditioning has left her a mess, and Cipher-9 helping her to overcome it I feel means that they are her BFF now. Even if they did something that, in the past, she would disapprove of. I like the idea that she eventually shifts her loyalty more to the people of the Empire than the Empire itself. It's the logical thing to do.

She is calm. Not cold, not distant, but emotionally together. She doesn't do things precipitously but thinks them out thoroughly. It's just that she thinks so fast that most people might conclude that she rushes to act.

She prizes logic over emotions. That doesn't mean she doesn't have feelings, but there might be times she feels badly about them, like she's flawed. Then she realizes that, logically, feelings are part of the human experience and can make the thought process work faster or better, so she's fine with that. She's put away her childish things, including the fear of childish things.