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Dec. 7th, 2012 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynIn response to themightyspazz's response to this post:
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN WRITING ADRIAN SHEPHARD
First – I am a New Yorker born and raised, and have grown up in and around the New York City area. I made Adrian from West Virginia largely because of two weeks I spent in Preston County some years ago, in which it was noted that it wasn't uncommon for young people looking to get out of the area to join the military. I have no actual ties to or association with the region and cannot claim any kind of personal knowledge or authority about anything whatsoever to do with the American South unless it has to do with the specific interstates I had to drive on in order to get to my Red Cross assignment for hurricane season of 2004. Any references or comments I have him make to anything whatsoever to do with Southern life is immediately suspect, and ideally should directly reference something specific that actually happened rather than 'well, he said/did X because that's what I think is typical of the region'. It won't guarantee that I avoid saying or doing something disgraceful with him, but at least it means I have a better chance of not being reprehensible or offensive to real people that way.
Second – Shephard's cussing pattern. Most of the soldiers I've known have been very polite and clean in their writing (I've had a fair number of military pen pals) and have turned out to be pretty foul-mouthed in person. Shephard is no exception. He has several tiers of cussing depending on his mood. Baseline speech in front of anybody who isn't his momma or a woman or child includes frequent use of 'fuck' and 'shit' and 'ass'-caliber curse words by default; he's not even using those words consciously, they just come naturally to him. Low level emotion gets more elaborate and more frequent curse words, chosen deliberately. The angrier he gets, the more convoluted and weird his cusses get- they make less and less sense and sound more like something out of Questionable Content. He'll usually start mixing in non-English cuss words at that level, too. When he gets really angry he'll occasionally just use foreign cusses and leave English out entirely. Beyond that, there are three tiers of rage left: Not Speaking At All, Speaking In Completely Polite, Grammatically Perfect, Tightly Controlled English With No Bad Words Whatsoever, and alllll the way out at the end where it's no longer rage but pure blue fury, he'll just drop all pretense of his own ability to use language and start quoting Milton with all the force and emotional content of profanity instead.
Third – Shephard needs to be part of something bigger than himself. He could theoretically be a rugged individualist, but that doesn't work for him. He's been part of something communal since childhood and while the specific community has changed from time to time (his family, his town, the Corps, etc.), there's always been one as part of his identity. Even now, when the only other Marines alive on Earth are the ones who were retired or medically discharged or whatever when the Combine came and thus were passed over by the kill-or-assimilate squads, he still introduces himself as "Shephard, USMC", and very often considers the latter part more important than his actual name. And even then he tends to give his last name out more often than his first. Part of the reason he hunts bullsquid is to cut down on the number of predators that pose a danger to the human community in general, because they're all that exists of his country and his people. He will always be partly communal, and this is why his daemon in daemonverse AUs is a small swarm of bees; it's a more fundamental thing than being part of a pack or a pod.
Fourth – Before being assigned to the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit, it's my Millicanon that Shephard went through the Marine Corps Scout Sniper training and maxed out all his scores. Any Marine who wants in on the Scout Sniper program has to meet certain very strict criteria, but for purposes of RP and writing, the most important ones that I have to keep in mind are "no history of mental illness" and "a high degree of maturity, equanimity, and common sense". This is a significant part of why Shephard is comparatively mellow and bears up better under stress or weird conditions than a lot of my other pups. I've assumed HECU is the Half-Life universe's counterpart to the real-world U.S. Marine Corps Chemical Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF), which has its own implications. Short version, anybody who qualifies for a unit like THAT has to be pretty damn levelheaded and quick on their feet, not to mention intelligent enough to assimilate the training material and handle everything horrifying the job throws at them. This isn't a case of 'Shephard is a product of his environment' so much as 'Shephard would not even have qualified to be in the environment in the first place if he weren't like this'. Mind you, not all the marines in HECU were smart, if the misspelled graffiti in Black Mesa was anything to go by. I imagine the less intelligent ones were very, very good at memorizing instructions and following directions.
Fifth – Shephard does not take stupid risks. He calculates his odds first- maybe not consciously, but he's pretty good at weighing his options and gauging his chances. I know that he's done some fairly insane stuff in Milliways RP, but most of it has been what he gauged as reasonably reasonable- having a good chance of optimal outcome compared to the chance of horrible failure. Temporary injuries and abject humiliation are not considered horrible failure- bones heal and chicks dig scars, after all- so he's willing to take chances doing stuff that a lot of other people would consider crazy. For instance, he's willing to go through the Satere-Mawe bullet ant ritual in order to a) get the Satere-Mawe who came out of Brazil with the Resistance to join the Marines once he starts recruiting again, and b) prove to himself that he can, basically. It's not going to leave permanent damage, and the reward is knowing that he's personally tougher than anyone who'd call him crazy, so why not On the other hand, if something involves the risk of death, the possible reward had better be absolutely and completely worth it, because he refuses to be the punchline of a redneck joke. There's a world of difference between "Hey, hold my beer, I wanna try something" and going toe to toe with a Gene Worm to get a clear shot at the inside of its mouth because nothing else will kill it before it destroys everything in the area.
themightyspazz's response to this post:THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN WRITING ADRIAN SHEPHARD
First – I am a New Yorker born and raised, and have grown up in and around the New York City area. I made Adrian from West Virginia largely because of two weeks I spent in Preston County some years ago, in which it was noted that it wasn't uncommon for young people looking to get out of the area to join the military. I have no actual ties to or association with the region and cannot claim any kind of personal knowledge or authority about anything whatsoever to do with the American South unless it has to do with the specific interstates I had to drive on in order to get to my Red Cross assignment for hurricane season of 2004. Any references or comments I have him make to anything whatsoever to do with Southern life is immediately suspect, and ideally should directly reference something specific that actually happened rather than 'well, he said/did X because that's what I think is typical of the region'. It won't guarantee that I avoid saying or doing something disgraceful with him, but at least it means I have a better chance of not being reprehensible or offensive to real people that way.
Second – Shephard's cussing pattern. Most of the soldiers I've known have been very polite and clean in their writing (I've had a fair number of military pen pals) and have turned out to be pretty foul-mouthed in person. Shephard is no exception. He has several tiers of cussing depending on his mood. Baseline speech in front of anybody who isn't his momma or a woman or child includes frequent use of 'fuck' and 'shit' and 'ass'-caliber curse words by default; he's not even using those words consciously, they just come naturally to him. Low level emotion gets more elaborate and more frequent curse words, chosen deliberately. The angrier he gets, the more convoluted and weird his cusses get- they make less and less sense and sound more like something out of Questionable Content. He'll usually start mixing in non-English cuss words at that level, too. When he gets really angry he'll occasionally just use foreign cusses and leave English out entirely. Beyond that, there are three tiers of rage left: Not Speaking At All, Speaking In Completely Polite, Grammatically Perfect, Tightly Controlled English With No Bad Words Whatsoever, and alllll the way out at the end where it's no longer rage but pure blue fury, he'll just drop all pretense of his own ability to use language and start quoting Milton with all the force and emotional content of profanity instead.
Third – Shephard needs to be part of something bigger than himself. He could theoretically be a rugged individualist, but that doesn't work for him. He's been part of something communal since childhood and while the specific community has changed from time to time (his family, his town, the Corps, etc.), there's always been one as part of his identity. Even now, when the only other Marines alive on Earth are the ones who were retired or medically discharged or whatever when the Combine came and thus were passed over by the kill-or-assimilate squads, he still introduces himself as "Shephard, USMC", and very often considers the latter part more important than his actual name. And even then he tends to give his last name out more often than his first. Part of the reason he hunts bullsquid is to cut down on the number of predators that pose a danger to the human community in general, because they're all that exists of his country and his people. He will always be partly communal, and this is why his daemon in daemonverse AUs is a small swarm of bees; it's a more fundamental thing than being part of a pack or a pod.
Fourth – Before being assigned to the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit, it's my Millicanon that Shephard went through the Marine Corps Scout Sniper training and maxed out all his scores. Any Marine who wants in on the Scout Sniper program has to meet certain very strict criteria, but for purposes of RP and writing, the most important ones that I have to keep in mind are "no history of mental illness" and "a high degree of maturity, equanimity, and common sense". This is a significant part of why Shephard is comparatively mellow and bears up better under stress or weird conditions than a lot of my other pups. I've assumed HECU is the Half-Life universe's counterpart to the real-world U.S. Marine Corps Chemical Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF), which has its own implications. Short version, anybody who qualifies for a unit like THAT has to be pretty damn levelheaded and quick on their feet, not to mention intelligent enough to assimilate the training material and handle everything horrifying the job throws at them. This isn't a case of 'Shephard is a product of his environment' so much as 'Shephard would not even have qualified to be in the environment in the first place if he weren't like this'. Mind you, not all the marines in HECU were smart, if the misspelled graffiti in Black Mesa was anything to go by. I imagine the less intelligent ones were very, very good at memorizing instructions and following directions.
Fifth – Shephard does not take stupid risks. He calculates his odds first- maybe not consciously, but he's pretty good at weighing his options and gauging his chances. I know that he's done some fairly insane stuff in Milliways RP, but most of it has been what he gauged as reasonably reasonable- having a good chance of optimal outcome compared to the chance of horrible failure. Temporary injuries and abject humiliation are not considered horrible failure- bones heal and chicks dig scars, after all- so he's willing to take chances doing stuff that a lot of other people would consider crazy. For instance, he's willing to go through the Satere-Mawe bullet ant ritual in order to a) get the Satere-Mawe who came out of Brazil with the Resistance to join the Marines once he starts recruiting again, and b) prove to himself that he can, basically. It's not going to leave permanent damage, and the reward is knowing that he's personally tougher than anyone who'd call him crazy, so why not On the other hand, if something involves the risk of death, the possible reward had better be absolutely and completely worth it, because he refuses to be the punchline of a redneck joke. There's a world of difference between "Hey, hold my beer, I wanna try something" and going toe to toe with a Gene Worm to get a clear shot at the inside of its mouth because nothing else will kill it before it destroys everything in the area.
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Date: 2012-12-08 11:07 am (UTC)Also now I know why his daemon is bees.
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Date: 2012-12-08 07:25 pm (UTC)... you know, assuming he didn't get killed because he was still at college preparing for graduation when the Black Mesa Incident happened and the world went to hell.