Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Gillar on March 29th, 2019, 2:04 am

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Howdy,

Weekend Challenge Time! This challenge will start at 9:00 PM Pacific Time, Thursday March 28th and go until 9:00 PM Pacific Time Monday April 1st. Awards will be posted soon after the challenge ends.

I am calling this, The Kryptonite Challenge. This challenge is all about your character's weaknesses. We like to think of our characters as being the best there is, was or ever will be. Unfortunately that is not the case. Well, at least it shouldn't be. So, write a minimum of a 2,500 word thread that sheds light on your character's flaws, failures, ineptitude or fears. Does your character have embarrassing flaws? Focus on them. Has your character failed at something in a rather monumental way? Show it. Is your character especially inept at some particular task or skill? Let us read about it. Now, what I don't want to see is threads about simplistic, inconsequential things. When I think of Kryptonite, I think of how debilitating it is to Superman. Think about it on that scale. Imagine if your character is great in so many things but then they are forced to face the one thing that can cripple them; mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally. What is that like?

Multiple 2,500 words threads will improve awards. Multiple player characters can participate in a single thread but each must contribute 2,500 words in order for them to qualify for an award.

Make sure you provide links to your thread(s) in your posts here as well as word count for each thread. Also, offer a short description of what your character's "Kryptonite" is that you are writing about.

Enjoy!
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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Gemma Parker on March 29th, 2019, 11:48 am

Kryptonite is crippling for Superman. There's always the horror on his face of "no, not that!" And then he staggers back, falls down, etc. Often the bad guy kicks him around for a bit or w/e, depending on the scene. Sometimes he tries to push through it, but there are always consequences. Sometimes he has friends that help him accomplish the task when he can't.

Gemma's whole character is defined by her weaknesses, so she's not really reminded of them, so much as they are highlighted in these threads while she is placed in situations that magnify the impact of those weaknesses.

It's also not just one weakness, like with Kryptonite. She has a recently dislocated shoulder, which means she isn't supposed to really do anything with it, but she's an herbalist and herbalists need both hands for a lot of their work.

Then there's the pneumonia. Both her shoulder injury and her sickness came as a direct result of her failures in The Quartz cave. She's a Konti, so she's a natural swimmer, but in a situation where she was supposed to be strongest, she failed to save a friend, failed to protect herself while swimming, and ended up getting injured and sick, which for a Konti is just embarassing if you don't know that the cave is Qalmur, which she doesn't. So she sees that as the failure that led to both these issues that then make her weak/struggle with even her daily activities. Anything that makes Gemma feel special has been taken away from her or strongly limited. She can't mix herbs, can barely talk, and the time she gets to Failure, she has been relegated to sitting in a chair and using her gnosis on a long line of lightly injured people, which, while it uses her "superpower", it feels like a huge step down in importance. She feels that she has become nothing but an annoyance to her boss, and wants to prove that she's still useful, but in the end she's turned away after being allowed a token prayer because she'll just get in the way.

So she tries to push through her injury but just makes it worse. She then tries to use her "superpower", which is her healing gnosis mark, to enable her to keep pushing, but she can't actually heal the injury, just soothe the muscles/pain, and she feels guilty that she's basically self medicating to push past her limits, while actually hurting herself more.

So there's guilt, which is another weakness. She's afraid of disappointing the strong female figures in her life, mostly her mom, her goddess, and her boss. So she stops using her gnosis in Weakness, because she's conflicted about whether to stop working hard, which would possibly disappoint her boss and her mom, but in the end her fear of disappointing her goddess is enough to get her to stop using her gnosis like that.

Thread: Weakness - Gemma struggles with her friend's death, that she was too weak to save her, and with her inability to do anything with her wounded shoulder. This is physical weakness for the shoulder, emotional weakness/low self esteem/not thinking objectively/etc for the pity party. She also realizes that she might be developing a dependance on her gnosis mark to numb the pain. And though she says it's just one more time, she finds herself praying again and again. But finally she feels guilty and feels that
WC: 540 + 529 + 516 + 514 + 446 = 2,545

Thread: Obsession and Denial - Gemma tries to go to class and pretend that everything's ok, but she is faced with her budding dependence, jealousy, and obsession. But it's not a problem. Really, it's not. She has it all under control. She is convicted of her lack of resolve, but only exchanges one weakness for another.
WC: 564 + 574 + 446 + 506 + 468 = 2,558

Thread: Infirmed - Gemma is sick with pneumonia, having overdone it while she should have been resting. And to make matters worse, she is tended to by her crush, Izo. She now has to sit there and endure the embarrassment of him seeing her in the least flattering light possible.
WC: 538 + 516 + 520 + 404 + 538 = 2,516

Thread: Failure - Gemma is limited in what she can do because of her sickness and injury, and when she tries to volunteer to help more, she's not allowed. A man dies because they're short on staff, and Gemma feels that if she had been better, she might have been able to help save him.
WC: 555 + 514 + 544 + 577 + 310 = 2,500
Last edited by Gemma Parker on April 1st, 2019, 1:32 pm, edited 17 times in total.
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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Oresnya Cacao on March 29th, 2019, 12:43 pm

Hello. I’m loving the idea of this challenge. Now I just have to decide on the weakness to highlight. I think I’ve already touched on the fragility of the Symenestra frame quite a bit so I’d like to touch on something different. I think what I’d like to aim for will show Oresnya’s inability to fight off hunger and, in doing so, will highlight her greater flaw of being unable to follow through with the small necessary steps. I’ll edit this if I decide differently.
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Gillar has made an excellent point in his most recent post here. While the above mentioned weakness is a foil, it is really not kryptonite. For every Sym, their fragile bones are one of their greatest weaknesses, so much so that close quarters combat is deadly for them. Time for Or to get a butt whooping.
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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Asterope on March 29th, 2019, 6:11 pm

Signing up! After some thinking I'm changing up my plans a bit, as I want to deal with the maledicted bone early this season and don't want to cram too much into one thread.

I'll be focusing on Aster's hopelessness and fear as her weaknesses, which have been a recurring theme since she was enslaved. All things considered her life as a slave hasn't been too rough yet and I'd like to change that in order to really be able to focus on her feelings of helplessness.

If I have time I may also do part of the thread focusing on the weakness of her mortal form at night, particularly how much more disconnected from Syna she feels.

Thread #1: Fatal Flaw Part I (3,106 words)

Thread #2: Fatal Flaw Part II (2,707 words)
Last edited by Asterope on April 2nd, 2019, 3:13 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Lani Stranger on March 29th, 2019, 6:42 pm


“In order to erase his personal history the warrior must create around himself a fog in which nothing about him seems tangible. Only tangible people have personal history." -Théun Mares

Funny enough this is actually one of my quotes of inspiration for Lani that I use as a template placeholder. I thought this was a super fun challenge because it is a thing that I am already explored with Lani this season. Lani is not an inherently a happy character, although she wants to be, and it is exactly her biggest flaw that makes it so that she is selfish and aloof which gets in the way of her ability to be content and happy. She is largely unaware of it, although in the brief moments she does recognize it, she is unable to get past it and change. Lani’s kryptonite is her inability to be honest with people, and her fear of developing actual connections. She was raised by a very aloof and neglectful mage who eventually fell into overgiving. Lani always viewed this relationship as what the apex of love should be, and so she is attracted to the shallow and dishonest, like herself, while sabotaging any real attempt to form a healthy relationship (
Do You See Me?, Goodbye Wind Reach). She is also prone to putting on a face for people, creating a shadow of herself which she thinks would most please whoever she is talking to, even if they know her well and it is not helpful (Birds of a Feather). Her inclination towards deception and her refusal to forge real connections with people has massively disadvantaged her before and continues to do so. She creates such a world for herself that she even questions if the God she had devoted her whole life to is real or if she made him up to cope with the fact that she has no healthy relationships in her life or sense of family(God by Design).

I tried to show an example of how she sabotages and evades connecting with people and how it can force her to do so much as flee a city and lie to even herself in the solos. With the thread with Madeira, we explored how both of their kryptonites attract them towards each other and warp even an honest childhood friendship into a trade of usefulness for Madeira and a gain of remaining unattached for Lani, despite how much each of them wants to have a genuine connection.

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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Kelski on March 30th, 2019, 12:11 am

This has been a tough one for me to pick out. Not because I don't know my character's weaknesses, but there's a lot of them to deal with. She's afraid of isolation, loneliness, weakness, and utterly terrified of slavery. Crylon had a good suggestion about her facing down her slavery issues and I think I will do that by taking her to the slave market.

I opted to combine her terror of ghosts (and a bad bad past with them) with her terrorism of Slavery had have her confront both things head on in a blind terrorized way.


[Weekend Challenge] Haunted By The Past - 5823 Words

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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Orakan on March 30th, 2019, 1:14 am

I'm loving this challenge but I do have a question: I've been wanting to do a thread where it's like a fever dream/nightmare - 1.) Would this qualify if it involves a character's weakness/fears? and 2.) Would this type of thread go in the Dreamscapes forum? Thanks muchly <3

I plan on focusing on small triggers from Orakan's past; things that remind him of being vulnerable, weak and hurt. Touch is another bit of kryptonite for him (as in he hates it/can't handle it), and something I enjoy making subtle mentions of so I might play into this a bit more and delve more into the psychological (which is something I've been intending on doing). Sadly unable to partake in the end. Thank you for the opportunity.

Hopefully gonna use this to get me back into writing after a dry spell. Thanks again, Gil!
Last edited by Orakan on April 1st, 2019, 9:49 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Crylon Stonecraft on March 30th, 2019, 5:17 pm


Crylon, being an Isur, still has some weaknesses. Even some fear.

Two that come to mind, 2 weaknesses/areas of ineptitude, and 1 which is also related to a fear.

He is completely inept at cooking, and I have some ideas about expanding on that in thread. While with building/making things he might not have a particular knowledge base, he can sort of figure it out physically or lean on his understanding from other related skills. This does not seem to work for him with cooking, making a dinner is far different from building a house.

For the cooking, his issue is more than just lack of cooking skill, its more of his thought process which doesn't translate into cooking. He may be able to learn to do some stuff by rote, but he just doesn't think in the fashion a cook should. He is too literal, which while good for making a house does not work with cooking. Which is a somewhat hard lesson for an proud Isur who "knows" he can do anything a human does and better, to find something so many do quite easily and which he simply cannot understand.

Cooking thread- 635+520+551+511+515= 2,732

Another thing he finds himself lacking in is swimming. Being an Isur he is quite heavy and dense, and so not naturally suited to swimming. He has taken rides on boats, but has not on foot gone in deeper water than he can stand in that he can recall. And in truth, when on boats he spends as much time as possible below deck. He finds the open, the deep water, unnerving.

Give him a plain. Give him a mountain, or a hole in the ground. But water... Not so much. He spent time in Ravok, but at the time was not consciously aware of his fear of deep water, but he soon will realize this fear he has of it. Walking into deep water, or jumping in, would be for him like finding someone with fear of heights, telling them to walk up to the edge of a tall buiilding, and to then tell them to jump off.

Water/Swimming thread- 591+816+591+635= 2,633

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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Anja Nightwatcher on March 30th, 2019, 5:50 pm

Anja's weakness is, and will likely always be, his failure to protect his family and their consequencal death at the hands of nuits. It's pretty much the driving factor to his character. I had to put some thought into how he would be forced to directly confront it, and I think I stumbled on an idea.
Anja's wife was formally a sverfra, and I thought it might be interesting if he ran into one of her family members who were unaware of her death.

The Shadow of Those Who Remain - (558+867+699+643=2767)
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Weekend Challenge (29th - 1st)

Postby Madeira Dusk on March 30th, 2019, 11:00 pm

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Changing things up a bit.

In one thread I have explored Madeira's unhealthy dependence on other people and how devastating it is for her to lose that buffer of strength she surrounds herself with. She also tries to prove her usefulness to herself with simple manual labour and fails spectacularly.

In another thread I have her admitting to herself the twisted and manipulative way she copes with with that dependence. As well as how much she fears her friends and allies finding out just how much she uses them, and how useless she is without them.

Easily Broken= WC 2511
Birds of a Feather= WC 2805
Total= 5316
Last edited by Madeira Dusk on April 1st, 2019, 9:31 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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