Meme! via sholio

[terajk]

Pick a character I've written and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

This one sounds like a TON of fun. XD

Comments

[chagrined]

Death the Kid!

[terajk]

(I was hoping someone would ask about him! You get six, because why not?)

1. Kid is not a person. (This colors all the other things.)

2. His obsession with symmetry is a) just a part of him amidst lots of other things, but b) pervasive and doesn't separate out neatly from the rest of him and c) several things at once, including a perceptual filter. Which affects what kinds of things he thinks are Important when describing a room or something.

By the same principle, hen I'm writing Toph Bei Fong from Avatar, for instance, I have to remember that she doesn't have a visual frame of reference and is very aware of spatial layouts. Or like how Ryouga from Ranma 1/2 has no concept of space whatever, which is hilarous because his impairment is a scarily-accurate representation of mine and yet I ALWAYS FORGET THAT. So I'll be agonizing over the Most Precise Directional Word to Use for, like, five minutes before realizing he won't know, either. XD

Also, Kid isn't just any not-a-person; he is a personification of Order in the Universe/a Lovecraftian madness god. (Which, to be honest, makes "I'm an abomination!" retroactively HILARIOUS.) So I write all the above a little differently than I would a human being with OCD. For one thing, Kid actually can affect the universe directly in ways no human could, and bringing balance to the world is in his job description. I don't know if I can put into words exactly how this is different, except that local-Kid was always that way.

3. He's not ashamed about being that way. At ALL. (This is in direct contrast to Ryouga, who admits he has no sense of direction but gets angry if other people so much as mention it.) He's capable of embarrassment--like when Black*Star and Ox are doing something stupid and Kid re-evaluates why he's friends wih them at all--but all Kid said when Black*Star broke a cone off the school building was: "You knew how I'd respond." His dad is pretty nonchalant about it, too. ("Kid-kun sure is difficult! Well, bye, kids!")

4. As a god, Kid is a little apart from human affairs. I don't know where Ohkubo intended Kid and his dad to be on the Sliding Scale of Shinigami and Grim Reapers, but I think part of the reason Death City is in Nevada in the middle of a desert is because that's really far away from the Real World (i.e. Japan.) Since Kid spends a lot of time with humans in their natural environment, he's less outside-of-things than his dad by human standards, but still. (Kid thinks "you've recovered from your injury!" is a good excuse to throw a party; his dad thinks "Hey, my son is kidnapped and we haven't even saved him yet!" is a good excuse to throw a party.)

5. But Kid cares very much about humans in general and his friends in particular. (The couple of times he's lost his entire supply of spoons, there's been an element of HUMANS IN DANGER FUCK). Sometimes there's a thread of compulsiveness in it, and sometimes he's just in the damn way (e.g. when Maka and Black*Star were frustrated with each other and Soul told him to let them handle it). He will defy his own father in the interest of protecting humans, even if he doesn't know them personally.

6. He can be a rich bastard/dickk/brat. Like how he's like: "I don't need to study for this test because I'm a shinigami" and "Just because a test has the word 'super' in front of it doesn't mean it's a big deal" and then busts into Liz and Patti's room without knocking when THEY were trying to study and wouldn't leave them alone. (Okay, they weren't trying that hard, but still.)

And then! His father calls him back from this battle he was in and is like: "I'm glad you're OK!" and Kid is like: "Father, will you stop talking and hurry this up?" and Lord Death made a sad face.

And sometimes he does stuff in my head and I can't tell if he's being protective/obsessive/or a dick. And that is THE BEST.

[chagrined]

Is the thing about being a Lovecraftian madness god something that shows up l8r on in the manga? or did they just drop that from the anime? I DID FINALLY FINISH THE ANIME THE OTHER DAY hahaha :)

[terajk]

1) *Congratulations!* I like the anime a lot. (There's more Asura, for one thing.) To celebrate, I'll finally get around to writing about Black*Star!

2) The "shinigami are Lovecraftian madness gods" thing is later in the manga. (I always thought the Kishin was, what with the being asleep for 800 years and spreading madness and hanging out in the background while all these other villains tried to use his power). At one point someone says "the Great Old Ones" (Lord Death is one of these--there were Eight Powerful Warriors altogether, Asura included, but Asura killed a couple of them) are beings whose existence drives men to madness.

Kid gets trapped in the Book of Eibon (which is a book in the Cthulhu mythos), so the other kids go in after him. And the Index of the book, which is an entity (and the Madness of Knowledge) who likes books and chats up Maka because she likes books, too, says (read right to left):





(I like to think "fragment of the Great Old Ones" is literal and Kid is, like, a piece of his dad that broke off. But then I like weird things.)