#oc tag raph

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

i need my ocs to be real specifically so raph truman can play david from the lost boys on broadway

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

also is sebastian ever insecure about having a gayass middle name. is he homophobic. how homophobic is he. what would happen if he woke up and he was bisexual

i know this is a joke but i don't really know how to respond in kind so i'm treating this like a serious ask i guess

i would say he's homophobic yeah. it doesn't really come up most of the time but he generally considers gay men pathetic for not being into women and he's not super pleased with the existence of lesbians because they're women who are off limits. these are pretty passive attitudes though, like, he doesn't go out of his way to bully random gay people and he's perfectly willing to associate with them. raph, for example, is openly gay and a member of sebastian's little cult in both dreampack aus. that being said, being condescending about other people's sex lives is very much how sebastian rolls, so if he sees an opportunity he's absolutely willing to use that as a cudgel in an attempt to make other people feel inferior to him.

i used to say his sexuality is "straight but he'd have sex with a man for personal gain if necessary" but honestly i think that's changed, in his current form i don't think he'd have sex with any guys. i'd say sandrine is the opposite but tbh i don't think she can even conceive of the idea of lesbianism. if a powerful woman made advances and she thought she could get something out of it she'd probably go for it though.

if he woke up and he was bisexual i don't think that much would change except that he'd cheat on his girlfriends with people of all genders, not just women. i don't think he'd be all that interested in long term relationships with guys.

related fun little fact: sebastian's worstie/second in command hugh randall has a repressed bisexual crush on him. sebastian has no idea and if he did he would 100% laugh, call it pathetic, and use it against hugh at every turn.

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

@idrisofficial

somehow didn’t see until now that you said we need to explore mikhail 🤝 raph immediately. i think their relationship would be Very Interesting because raph’s defining qualities are a) desperately ambitious in the comes from nothing sort of way b) a liar c) flamboyant gay manwhore

like raph would be jealous as shit of mikhail. jealous as SHIT. that’s everything he wants babey! why does THAT flamboyant bisexual manwhore get the life of luxury while he, raph truman, has to strive for every little scrap? huh? but then he’d turn around and clap mikhail on the back and they’d trade stories about topping and get eyebrow piercings together. it’s like that one conversation we had about how mikhail would fit in the depths dreampack au.

tbh i feel like they might hook up about it. or at least have an understanding, yknow? manwhore 2 manwhore communication, manwhore 2 manwhore conversation.

it’s also interesting because i feel like kaia would get along with raph’s sister olivia (they both have autism creature quiet but very intelligent swag) but mikhail and kaia are significantly closer in age than raph and olivia (who are six years apart).

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

which of your ocs have pretentious favorite colors. like “emerald green” or whatever

franklin’s favorite color is indigo and in the non canon Bygone Era Of Lore his old love interest made fun of him for having a pretentious favorite color

raph will usually say his favorite color is red but it’s actually a color kind of between red and orange idk how to describe it but it’s really vivid in my head

atticus’s favorite color is gold and he would probably wax poetic about it in a way that some people would say is pretentious

miriam’s favorite color is turquoise (same as me lol)

sebastian has a few color motifs, the main ones are black and silver but he’s also a fan of pale champagne sorts of colors. silver is his actual favorite color but i wanted to include him bc he’s a pretentious bitch in general

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

🌑 and ⚡️ for raph, lev, sol, meera

this got so so long lmao sorry. but also you put 4 characters on the same ask, and the ask is two complex intertwining questions, so whose fault is that really.

🌑 - what does your character think is their biggest flaw?

⚡ - what is actually your character's biggest flaw?

raph - i’m gonna answer these in reverse.

his true biggest flaw is ambition all the way down. as much as i associate him with envy, and as much as envy informs his actions, it’s not in fact his biggest flaw. this is actually something i think is really interesting about him, because as much as ambition can totally ruin his relationships and be a corrupting influence, under the right circumstances his inclination towards ambition over envy loops back around to being almost a redeeming quality. like, if he was given the choice between taking all the money and luxury and fame he could possibly want or taking that success away from someone else, even someone he deeply hates, he would take the money and run without hesitation. and at least to me, that’s the far better option. at the same time, ambition is still very much a fatal flaw here. if all that fame and status and money and luxury was a guarantee (unlike in, say, the dreampack au, where sebastian never guarantees anyone anything) he could absolutely be bought off even if something really bad happened to the people he loves most. the guilt would eat him alive, but it wouldn’t be enough to stop him from caving. and even absent extreme hypotheticals, ambition ruins his relationships all. the. time. he abandons his family and lies constantly to everyone.

raph can identify all that as selfishness. like, he knows it’s shitty to lie and leave people behind. he knows he puts himself above others and it causes problems. and on the one hand, he’s right that ambition isn’t inherently bad. but on the other, so much of his selfishness is deeply tied to his ambition. all of that lying and leaving people is ultimately because he sees his origins as a burden impeding his upward mobility. and he’s fully willing to step on people in service of that same upward mobility. not all of his selfishness is ambition driven - we can’t forget that he’s an alcoholic. but if not for his ambitions to become rich and famous, he would have so much more capacity to care about his own personal growth and cultivation of morals. he might actually listen to someone like hunter or olivia telling him to fix himself. he almost definitely wouldn’t be as willing to step on people. but instead of listening to the people who care about him, let alone his own conscience, his response to people (or the little voice in his head) calling him out on his shit is Try Again When I’m Rich And Famous. and he absolutely does not recognize this as a flaw. it’s totally logical to him.

lev - also answering this in reverse for him. lev’s biggest flaw is his inability to define his own interests. he’s very competent and decisive, but he’s not an independent thinker. he doesn’t have much of a conscience and he doesn’t have authority issues, so he’s more than fine serving the interests of people who suck if he has a personal relationship with them. even to the point of doing horrible things himself.

he’s a relatively self aware guy, and he definitely knows this about himself, but he doesn’t see this as a flaw at all. he sees it as loyalty. he mostly sees himself as a chill dude. he would probably name his biggest flaw as cockiness or arrogance, itself an act of humility lmao. tbh he doesn’t see his arrogance as that big of a flaw but he wouldn’t be the type to say “i don’t have any flaws”. i don’t think he could name a real major character flaw he has; he knows he’s not perfect, but he’s not especially prone to self reflection. his self awareness is mostly intuitive. and honestly he doesn’t have a ton of major character flaws! he has a few, don’t we all, and they’re Not Great ones, but he’s mostly chill! anyway, he does have a cocky side, but he’s also competent and he‘s only boastful to a point. he’s always zigzagging across the line between confidence and arrogance.

sol - he thinks his biggest flaw is his inability to compromise. when it comes to minor issues, he actually doesn’t see this as a flaw, but it affects his life in bigger ways that genuinely torment him. sol is constantly torn between two worlds. on the one hand, there’s the world of excellence and glory and prestige, of gold medals and inheriting the family business. on the other hand, there’s the world of sunlight and tall grass and his boyfriend. sol sees these two worlds as fundamentally irreconcilable, and he desperately wants both of them to the fullest extent. he would never be content to live a life of mediocrity, but if he tried to force himself to live according to his mother’s idea of a perfect son, he would break completely. sol’s not one for self-loathing most of the time, but whenever this predicament comes up in a significant way, he can’t help but hate himself.

but honestly, that’s not really a character flaw. maybe it would be if he cared at all about how his inability to compromise manifests in smaller ways, but he doesn’t. he cares about this specific situation because it’s (genuinely!) the biggest obstacle to his happiness. the rest of the time, he doesn’t care that it’s his way or the highway. he sees it as the natural order of things. tbh i don’t think he sees himself as having true character flaws.

needless to say, he’s not a god. he’s kind of an asshole. in fact, he’s enough of an asshole that i couldn’t really single out one trait as his biggest flaw - wrath, stubborn pride, and entitlement may be separate characteristics on paper, but when it comes to sol they’re an unholy fusion manifesting as one guy you do NOT want to cross. if things don’t go his way, he will unleash the fury of a thousand suns, even if it destroys everything.

meera - for what she thinks is her biggest flaw, it depends on what point in her typical arc we’re talking about. sebastian almost completely breaks her psychologically, and at her lowest points she would be more hard pressed to name a good quality of hers than a flaw. but what she would probably identify as her biggest flaw is “patheticness”. meera really isn’t pathetic most of the time, but it’s one of sebastian’s favorite insults (in general, not just towards her). her identification with this flaw actually gets worse as she slowly falls out of love with him, because she knows he’s horrible but continues to crave his approval and to let him tell her what to do even when it goes against her conscience and sense of self.

but there is a point after she leaves him when she stops believing this about herself, especially if it’s the full send six of crows style setup where part of her healing is acquiring many many knives and becoming deadly. at that point she sees her pervasive shame (and her inability to overcome it) as her biggest flaw. she knows it’s stopping her from having the life she wants, but she can’t get past it, and she hates that. which of course makes her feel even more ashamed and the cycle continues.

as for her actual biggest flaw, she gives too many second chances. despite her HIGH walls once she’s been hurt and her belief in justice, it’s really hard for her to act directly against against anyone she’s been close to, even if that closeness is long past and she’s come to see them in a much worse light. when she’s escaping trauma, what she wants most of all is to move on and live her life away from it. this is super admirable, but not always helpful when sebastian continues to make her life miserable even after they’ve separated. and especially when she’s face to face with him, it’s very difficult for her most of the time, even when definitive action is direly needed. she only partially recognizes this - she knows her reluctance to take revenge on sebastian, but she sees it as the virtues of restraint and mercy, and the strength to move on. she only really recognizes it as a flaw when she has to face it head on, either in a direct confrontation or in a situation where her failure to act leads to horrible consequences.

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

emerald, raph + isadora

EMERALD - what do others deem their most valuable trait?

for raph i would say it’s his warmth. the way raph curates his personality, he wants to come off as both cool and warm - metaphorical opposites, but not actually opposing traits. he can definitely tip coolness into coldness when he’s not at his best, but more often, he’s genuinely inviting people into the world he wants them to see, the world he wants to create together with them. (he’s knockin on your door, let him inside.) now, if they were to see The Truth, that would be a different story. everything on the other side of the invitation is just as curated as his public persona in general. but the invitation itself is genuine, and the people around him see that and it makes them feel good.

for isadora it’s her spirit. that’s really vague but tbh it’s a cluster of things and idk if i can really isolate just one of them as The Thing People Value Most About Her bc they really all go together. it’s her sense of fun and adventure, her stamina, the way she’s always the one to start a conversation. she will always take you out to do something fun and she can often convince you to try something new. she really brings that out in others, even people she has to draw out of their shell. it’s a huge part of her personality and one that has a big effect on other people. honestly, this is the less layered and calculated version of my answer for raph. isadora is so carefree, and her way with people really shows that. she puts herself out there for others, while raph draws people into his own (curated) world. they’re very different flavors of extroverts, but extroversion really shapes the ways each of them interacts with other people.

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

💍 raph

💍 RING — does your oc have any piercings? do they want any (more) piercings?

yes he does! i was actually just thinking about this, probably in the context of david!raph which i suspect is part of why you asked this question. in my mind he gets piercings in college and it’s def one ear piercing and one eyebrow piercing. optional/i’m undecided: a single piercing in both ears and/or a double piercing in at least one ear; an industrial. i don’t think he would have double piercings in both ears plus an industrial, but maybe single piercings plus an industrial or double piercings in one ear plus an industrial. is this confusing lmao sorry i yap too much sometimes 😭

[halfwaydeepunofficial]

15 and 31 for raph on the language asks

15. what is your oc’s favourite or "go-to" swearword when under duress?

my instinct is that it’s “fuck”, but i feel like i would have to cross reference different scenes i’ve written to properly answer this question. he has his own voice for sure, but i just write what feels true to him in the moment, i don’t really have “rules” about which swears he uses when, etc.

31. how often does your oc raise their voice? is this always deliberate or can they sometimes not help it?

raph’s not much of a shouter. he has kind of a loud speaking voice, which is partly natural and partly affect, but he doesn’t “raise his voice” too often. sometimes he might in the heat of an argument, but usually when he gets hostile/aggressive/closed off it comes through in his body language and harsh tone rather than yelling.