Erythema (post-reunion)

Printable View

09-02-2014, 09:36 PM
Morning Solitude

Erythema (post-reunion)

Disclaimer: The "(post reunion)" thing is very important as she pretty much underwent a polar shift in her personality before said reunion happened. Her position in the timeline affects both her personality and her backstory.

Name: Erythema
Gender: Female
Species: Donkey
Age: mid 20s
Appearance: From the neck-up. Her entire color scheme is exactly like her twin brother's
Quick facts: A foreigner, lives with her twin brother in Fillydelphia. She and her brother work together and do odd jobs.

History/Background: She's from an island far off of Equestria's shores, one that is mired in territorial wars between different clans. Key events in her life gave her the conviction to become a skilled warrior where she has become feared by friends as well as foes. Her ideal became to protect not only herself but those she holds dear. With her parents now deceased, her twin brother is the only family she has left and she has made a promise that he won't die before she does.

Some time ago she insisted on accompanying her brother and the rest of the crew on a mission to discover potential new islands to migrate to. However, they got shipwrecked and washed up on Equestria's shores where everyone got separated. Her new conviction had become to find her brother and go back home. Because she had been very aversive to interacting with the locals, that went very slowly. Another important thing that was happening were her observations of Equestrian societies but in her stubborn refusal to let her guard down, all the clues just kept floating in the back of her mind. She was eventually found by a search party and got reunited with her brother. As the reunion happened, she heard of the kindness of the locals as well as having seen it in this reunion. All the pieces fit together now and it finally sinks in that her cold, barbed steel exterior has lost its relevance, at which point she had a breakdown. For days in the aftermath she was unable to speak and she clung to her brother like a scared filly to a parent. Now she is left wondering how she's going to live in a world that seems so utterly different than what she grew up in.

Personality: Quite shy and somewhat easily frightened. She prefers to stay by her brother's side but she's still having a hard time feeling safe on her own (and unarmed). In most interactive situations, she would rather let her brother handle everything -- again turning to him as though he were a parent. She just comes off as very confused, indecisive and overly alert of her surroundings. It's as though she never really knows what to say, how to talk or how to act and she's too concerned with what might go wrong. Needless to say at this point, she'd be very awkward to interact with.

Added: As time passes and her more vulnerable side is coming out, slowly the sins of her previous life as a killing machine is starting to catch up with her. As her vision on the front lines of war continue to fade and blur but with her memories still vivid, she is unprepared to cope with these memories as her vulnerable self.
09-03-2014, 03:51 PM
Muffet

Sorry for taking so long to review, work's been killer. :blush:

To start off, we really don't know much about the world outside of Equestria and generally speaking, it's best to discuss with mods beforehand before using an outside location. That said, we don't really see a war-torn land as being something acceptable. Also the RP takes place almost exclusively in and around Ponyville, so a reason to be there at least somewhat frequently, if not living there, is rather necessary.

The only other real issue is she's very cold and cautious around ponies in Equestria until she reunites with her brother, where she immediately goes to the extreme opposite of being shy and nervous. Someone with steely resolve likely would maintain that defence mechanism of simply ignoring others and/or pushing them away rather than 180 into someone who can barely function around others.

Adjust these things and we should be good to go.
09-03-2014, 05:45 PM
Morning Solitude

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trixie

Sorry for taking so long to review, work's been killer. :blush:

To start off, we really don't know much about the world outside of Equestria and generally speaking, it's best to discuss with mods beforehand before using an outside location. That said, we don't really see a war-torn land as being something acceptable. Also the RP takes place almost exclusively in and around Ponyville, so a reason to be there at least somewhat frequently, if not living there, is rather necessary.

Hmmm... Well, they could move to Ponyville because of some sort of job offering -- at least a temporary one where they may decide to stay there altogether. As for her origins, it'll be an issue when she needs to recount for past experiences (especially with the RP that's being planned for her where she sees a therapist. That or Princess Luna visiting her in her nightmares -- whichever is more available).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trixie

The only other real issue is she's very cold and cautious around ponies in Equestria until she reunites with her brother, where she immediately goes to the extreme opposite of being shy and nervous. Someone with steely resolve likely would maintain that defence mechanism of simply ignoring others and/or pushing them away rather than 180 into someone who can barely function around others.

Adjust these things and we should be good to go.

At heart, she's always been like a scared filly. It's just that over the years, she's learned to suppress that fear in order to unleash her full fighting potential. All of this development happened within the context of a brutal reality and it's that reality -- or at the very least, just the idea of it -- that kept the warrior in her functioning which can be described as "no hesitation, no pity, no pride". It's not something she enjoyed doing but she did all that because she's always seen it as something that needed to be done. Of course, she needed to see something meaningful in all of it because otherwise she'd surely lose the will to fight if not to live altogether. That meaning is to protect those whom she sees hope in. She believes that if she takes on the brunt of the harsh realities, those with high potential can work to find a way to solve this quagmire and end the insane levels of violence for as long as their benevolence is still intact. She understood that she would likely die before her hopes are realized but she would at the very least know that she gave everything she possibly could.

So two important point need to be kept in mind here;
1. That her development as a soldier happened within the context of that harsh reality she grew up in
2. A part of her still hopes for a life of low levels violence, even though she finds it very difficult to imagine such a world.

That being said, deep inside, she's open to the possibility of a low-violence reality. When the Equestrian society devoted pony-hours and resources into finding her and the crew and gave them a chance to live in harmony with the local equines... This far surpassed her wildest dreams and because it all ties in with her prior observations as well as the actions taken, at that point she thinks she'd have to be insane to deny any longer that she's entered a low-violence society -- far lower than fathomed.

This is where point #1 comes in. Her development as a combatant and all the perspectives and mindsets within the context of that harsh reality. But now that she's in Equestria... The context that fed into her combatant mindset isn't there anymore. What's more, while she may have loathed the past 10 years of her life as a combatant, at least she found meaning in it. It was a means to an end in which she saw the meaning of her life. But Equestria is a safe place and everything she has developed is no longer needed. What is she to do now? Has she lost her relevance entirely? Does she need to exist anymore? Making matters worse are the kind of social skills she has. It assumes that everyone is a potential bully and that they be cowed into respecting you -- with brute force if necessary. This is why she is also feared by her comrades. In Equestria, this is just unnecessary and she realizes this. She has no experience whatsoever to draw on befitting of this new environment. This is why she comes off as not knowing what to say, how to talk or how to act and right now, she very much dreads the idea of upsetting or letting down folks who have given her and her kind a gift that's precious beyond the extent of her imagination.

It's all back to the drawing board for her.

So yeah, I hope that explains how and why she 180'd like that. Hope that makes sense.
09-03-2014, 07:16 PM
Muffet

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morning Solitude

-snip-

While we understand what your intention is here for the character, you also need to understand how RP functions. It's very much built around the social aspects of day-to-day life between ponies and doesn't really lend itself well to dealing with these issues well... at least not including things like therapy or visits from Luna or the like. It feels a lot like you are more intending to write a story about this character (and her brother, I assume) rather than participate in a group-oriented story where everyone and no one is the central character and very little progression happens "off-screen," so to speak. As of right now we would still require the same changes mentioned earlier, and you are, of course, welcome to message any of us on here or via Skype if you want to discuss more.