Why did you butcher Lawan's personality so bad in your fic?
Wow.
I was debating if I should answer this one at all, but you know what, I have coffee and a few minutes to spare. So. Let's go.
Is this question rude? Why- why, yes it is. But I admit it isn't totally unwarranted. A lot of canon characters in my Dying Light fics aren't exactly who they were in the games.
Kyle Crane is probably the best example, because this man is not the exact same dude in my fics as the one you play as. I've dialed up his humour (to the better or the worse is up to personal taste), I've made breaking the fourth wall (addressing the reader) a hobby for him, and I've- yeah, I've given him hobbies. And a taste in music. And turned him into a Star Wars fan. Among many other things. None of that exists in a vacuum; all ends up having an effect on how I write him and leads to him saying things and doing things which the OG Crane of the game would not.
But most of those changes are somewhat superficial; I haven't changed who he is as a person because I haven't changed a lot to what leads up to his deployment in Harran.
My Dying Light 2 fic is different.
Monsters, We. does two things that have a much bigger impact on the characters than adding a hobby here and a bit of fleshed out background there might. One, it introduces a new faction, The Church, which influenced how Villedor as a whole behaves. Two, I purposefully changed key events in the lives of a bunch of characters.
Specifically Lawan, Hakon, and Frank.
Lawan: In MW, Lawan was raised by the Nightrunners, full stop. Frank, Hakon, and everyone else, they were her family. Her dads, if you will. She loses that family in the VNC tower tragedy; some to death, others to the Nightrunners splitting up, tearing what might've been left of it apart.
She blames Hakon for this, because he was the one who backed out first. And, no... they were at no point in a relationship in MW. She just hates him for getting her family killed. And, yeah, she might even want him dead.
But he's not on a hit list. She has no list. More on that in a bit.
Hakon: Hakon didn't want to die. He took one look at Frank's plan, decided it'd be suicide, and chose not to die. But rather than calling the mission off after Hakon convinced others not to go, Frank went ahead with it anyway and got nearly everyone else killed in the process.
Now. Who's fault is this?
Everyone blames Hakon, of course, which ends up getting the man shunned by not only the Fish Eye, but every other hold that is now convinced Hakon is the reason the Nightrunners are gone.
That's why he ends up joining the Church (the faction Waltz is a part of in MW). Not because anyone blackmailed him with I'll hurt Lawan (the literal child, by the way), but because no one else would have him. He couldn't have survived on his own.
Frank: Can someone please tell me how a dysfunctional drunk is able to run a place like the Fish Eye for another ten years and maintain the respect of everyone around him, keeping the place save(ish) and in his own name rather than having it taken over? Especially when he isn't an asshole who'll walk over people to be able to keep it, but supposedly A Good Guy?
That's a rhetorical question.
Yes, Frank started drinking heavily after what happened. But then he took one long look at Lawan, the child he was raising, and decided he was a better man than that. That is why he not only still owns the Fish Eye in MW, but how he managed to turn it into a reliable neutral ground. A sanctuary, if you will, which is protected by a truce all of Villedor's factions respect. Including the Church.
And that's also why Lawan doesn't have a Kill List (which she otherwise conveniently starts working on when Protagonist arrives), because Frank didn't drink her entire childhood away. She's still brash. She's impulsive. And she's maybe a bit more childish and emotionally unsteady than she was in the game, which isn't meant to be a bad thing. She's what 20, 21, in a world that is unsteady and counter productive to maturing gracefully.
No, rather than having a Kill List, she's the one person Frank trusts to get shit done around the Fish Eye. Specifically when it involves being out on the roofs or the streets, or chucking idiots down the stairs and out of the hold when they can't behave.
Does all of that mean I butchered her character? Eh. If you want to think about it that way, sure.
