#ooc. ask

[rcketbutcher]

how does proton handle/cope with fear? we know from your threads (eyebrow waggles) that it's something he's capable of. does it affect his choices, or keep him from doing certain things?

my answer builds off this post from way early on in my blog; it’s a pretty good primer before you read this one, but i’ll reiterate most of the key points here. buckle up. 

surprise (bully for you plumes for figuring it out) – proton does have a fear response. of a sort. i still maintain he’s never actually felt paralyzing heart pumping terror, because his brain and body process that sort of neurological signal as anger. 

anger (annoyance, frustration, etc., etc.) is the easiest emotion for him to grasp, and it’s the one he unconsciously resorts to whenever he feels something a bit more murky. proton is a fighter, not a flight-er, and if he feels pressured enough, he will try to kill you. considering he’s trained to do that sort of thing, he’ll probably succeed.   

so what makes him afraid?

it’s easier to talk about what doesn’t. threats, intimidation, gore, mutilation -  impressive or brutal displays of power don’t really do it for him. instead, they make him curious, if anything at all.  

he’s also not afraid of more abstract concepts like failure. he’s adept to the point of disaster at living in the moment without even a nod to any potential consequences. in some cases, it makes him extremely good at his job, as he doesn’t cave under pressure; in other cases, he comes dangerously close to making more trouble than he’s worth. 

what does get to him though is loss of control. 

not losing control of a situation; proton is a mean improvisor, and may get a thrill from dancing on the edge like that. even when he goes on one of his infamous boredom benders, he’s not really out of control. it’s all on his own terms, of his own making. so long as he’s got full control of himself, he’s golden. 

the ticket is when that’s taken away. 

sidebar: i don’t have an air-tight definition of what this ‘loss of control of the self’ means in this particular context, so things are gonna get pretty anecdotal from here. 

an easy answer is a situation in which proton is not at his 100%. if he’s sick or injured, he’s more volatile, more likely to lash out. he usually finds a place to lick his wounds in private when he’s recovering from something, and when he does it’s best not to seek him out. 

another more murky answer is touch.

touching proton is a good way to immediately get his hackles up. proton uses touch exclusively as a tactic of manipulation or intimidation, or even as a prelude to a physical attack, so someone initiating contact with him is a huge red flag. on one level, attempts to manipulate, trick, deceive, or lie to him do make proton genuinely angry. on another level, preserving his sense of self and his separation from others is a powerful instinct that can override most everything else. proton is deeply attached to who he perceives himself to be, and threats to that can illicit a response as great as threats to his physical person. 

tldr; proton copes with fear through anger. instead of limiting his choices or keeping him from acting, it makes him more likely to take extreme measures to alleviate the feeling. 

[rcketbutcher]

Pride, Yah

questions be damned meme.

PRIDE / what is your muse’s biggest flaw?

that depends on how you want to quantify it, because there are a lot of big’uns. 

“trouble seeing the forest for the trees” is understating it, a little. proton seems to genuinely lack the ability to conceptualize longterm/secondary/inadvertent consequences of his actions while he’s deciding what to do. either that, or he simply doesn’t give a damn. it’s hard to say which. 

on its own, that could be innocuous, but it often comes out in tandem with proton’s proclivity to intense boredom and need for consistent stimulation. 

this becomes a real problem for team rocket as a whole, when proton deems a mission not engaging enough, and rectifies that by adding unnecessary risk. there have been a few notable occasions where he’s put one of rocket’s long games into jeopardy, by exacerbating relations with other organizations, or incurring a police crackdown on crime. 

there’s not much hope for curbing his behavior, either; it’s almost impossible for proton to learn from his mistakes, and he often repeats them over and over. the upshot of this is that it makes him pretty predictable, so it’s not too difficult for someone with sufficient foresight to nudge him away from the usual pitfalls and keep him busy. 

but in a larger, character-structure sense, his biggest flaw is his inability to recognize them. it makes him vulnerable in a way he cannot see, and thus cannot control, and it will catch up to him, eventually. 

YAH / something your muse agrees to 100% of the time.

placing pocket-change bets on everything and anything under the sun, word games, pistachio flavor, pulling all-nighters, and bar fights. 

[rcketbutcher]

GOD and DNA?

questions be damned meme.

DNA / what was your muse’s home life like?

i haven’t put much of anything up on this blog about proton’s backstory for a variety of reasons, partly because it’s still broad sketches, partly because i may want to move things around in the future and i don’t want to do a huge retcon. having one up may resolve some questions people have, but i’m not entirely sure i want to do that. yet. 

in any case, one thing i absolutely do want to stress on this blog, is that proton’s current circumstances have grown from a specific series of events. almost all of them are choices. there’s no one ultimate, character defining moment; instead, they’re more like a sequence of slight course corrections. he’s ended up where he is because, in some way, if not consciously, he decided to be here. 

so all that said, proton’s home life was....? honestly, not bad. he’s from fuchsia city. his family was working class, and his parents were not so much neglectful as they were just really really busy. he’s an only child. he grew up with a lot of time on his hands. 

i know i just got done saying he has no defining character moment, but since catalysis is a pretty big theme on this blog, there is one event that’s fairly important, and set the tone for things to come after. 

when he’s about six, his father was killed in a car crash while proton was in the vehicle. already a fairly precocious and curious child, the crash sent proton into a spiraling obsession on questions of morality, mortality, what’s beyond the grave, and why we should even care. the stress of loss and becoming the sole provider for herself and her child kept proton’s mother out of the house, so he had a lot of opportunities to do “some research.”

which is why i’m actually real glad you asked these two questions, because they pair pretty nicely together.

GOD / does your muse believe in a god?

short answer: no.

people don’t often expect this, because proton comes off as someone grounded in practical knowledge, instead of theoretical, but he’s actually quite the amateur philosopher. and i mean that in both ways of the word; it’s more of a riddles game to him, than something serious, and he’s also, frankly, bad at it. he lacks the internal awareness needed to be critical of his own opinions; he doesn’t consider, let alone value, the ideas of others; he doesn’t lend due weight to information that may contradict his own conclusions; he thinks in absolutes, because considering the requisite nuance is often so messy and unsatisfying. 

what i’m getting at is, he’s put together what he thinks are the facts, concluded there is, in fact, no god, and he sees no reason to reassess that conclusion. as for the various deity pokemon across the regions, well, he’s killed and eaten pokemon before. perhaps none as powerful, but he doesn’t see why they’d ultimately be any different. 

[rcketbutcher]

loyalty, feel

questions be damned meme.

FEEL / answered here.

LOYALTY / does your character have any loyalty to any group?

it may come as a surprise to learn that he’s capable of it. or that his loyalty may, in fact, even be desirable. regardless of how reckless he is, when the rubber hits the road, proton can also be an excellent person to have in your corner. the issue is that, like so much else about him, proton’s loyalty is always conditional. it’s hard to win, and once you have it, he needs to be continually convinced that you’re worthy of it. 

at this point, the one person who’s earned his loyalty is the big man upstairs. the boss man, the o.g., giovanni. and to be frank, that is really the only lynchpin securing proton’s loyalty to team rocket as a whole. 

it’s rooted in two things: first, proton actually respects giovanni. it’s the sort of respect that one might afford something more powerful and more dangerous than one’s self, but considering proton’s disdain for altruism and authority figures, it’s the only kind of respect that he knows. and second, perhaps more unusual, is that he honestly, genuinely likes giovanni as a person. the payoff of this is significant; giovanni’s the only person who has a consistent and steady influence over proton’s actions and behavior. and it works out in proton's favor: sure, sometimes he has to do something he doesn't particularly want to, but being part of the team is way, way more stimulating than being on his lonesome.

the point is that proton is loyal, not only because, at the moment, it’s most beneficial to him, but also because he wants to be. and sometimes, it’s hard to tell which has more weight in his decision making: necessity or desire. even he doesn't know.

[rcketbutcher]

ELEMENT, FEEL

questions be damned meme.

ELEMENT / what is your muse “made of?” what is their character like?

the combination of extreme apathy and extreme curiosity can create some truly dark outcomes, though he would prefer to call them ‘inspired.’

FEEL / how does your character react to a person’s touch? (also @ those two anons!) 

in a word: badly. for the instigator, that is. 

unless he’s already initiated physical contact with someone, his response is unilaterally negative. if you try to touch him while you’re in his line of sight, proton may not overtly attack you, but surprise him, and it doesn’t much matter who you are — he will respond violently. 

if you tap him on the shoulder and get your wrist snapped as a result, don’t expect an apology, even if you two otherwise get along well. count yourself lucky that he stopped at that.

[rcketbutcher]

// mun wants to know about butt, muse wants to know about hands (but don't tell her i told you that).

appearance meme

hands (@pkmncontestsorbust and @pxgtails, because you both also asked about this.)

proton has fairly broad hands and long fingers, and they’re rarely still. he is in the habit of using them to accentuate his speech with a wide variety of gestures, some of them abstract, and some crude, but all carefully precise and perfectly placed in conversation. he’s also almost always fiddling with something, or tapping out an arhythmic beat. he is extraordinarily deft, although it is not something that he often showcases just for the sake of it. despite his reputation for chaotic destruction, when the situation calls for it, he’s capable of extreme delicacy and surprising gentleness. 

in terms of appearance, proton’s hands are riddled with small scars from pinfinger mishaps or repeatedly tearing the skin around his knuckles. his left has seen considerable more damage than his right, as that is the hand he deflects with in a knife fight. the pads of his fingers are rough from callous build up. his hands are usually quite dry and warm. but most often, they’re hidden away in his gloves. 

butt 

to be honest, proton’s butt is the only nice thing about him. 

it’s plush but firm, and generally gets excellent definition from the jumpsuit he wears, which is tight enough to turn some heads, but loose enough for imagination. all the data agrees, it’s his best angle, partly because of the view, and partly because otherwise he might see you and start talking to you, which is the last thing most people want. 

it’s also all inked up. i’ve yet to figure out the design, but proton has a full back tattoo that begins at the tops of his shoulders and ends just above mid thigh.  

[rcketbutcher]

♡ + fear

♡ + headcanon meme

this is a bit tricky to answer without sounding like a copout, because the short of it is that proton doesn’t feel fear. i don’t mean that he’s so worldly and jaded nothing scares him, i mean, his brain doesn’t condition fear or process fear-related stimuli in a way that induces that sort of response. similarly, he doesn’t experience emotions that are offshoots of fear — things like anxiety, doubt, panic, or concern. instead, in most instances where a fear response would be expected, proton feels curiosity, or anger. it would take an event that reaches beyond his ability to comprehend it for him to experience something like fear.

some upsides to this: he’s able to remain cool under extreme pressure and make rational, calculated decisions. his area of expertise — combat — involves a large amount of head game; intimidation and fear tactics can greatly inhibit an opponent’s skill by pushing them into a place of self-doubt. as such, proton has a significant edge on opponents who bank on fear as a secondary weapon. 

on the flip-side, proton doesn’t instinctively recognize frightening situations (by which i mean, situations in which having a fear response is useful). while he can assess when a situation is dangerous, he relies on other information to do so. say, for example, someone is threatening his life: in order to decide whether to deescalate (or otherwise act), proton needs to believe that the threat is real, and that’s based on his own perception of that person’s ability to carry out their threat. to be fair, proton’s really really good at analyzing people this way, but he’s bad at objectively analyzing himself and his own weaknesses. so it’s not uncommon for him to underestimate just how dangerous the situation is. this is especially apparent when he purposely adds risk to missions for his own amusement, and they barely escape by the skin of their teeth. what makes it even worse is he’s not aware that this is a weakness at all. 

so i’m venturing into tldr territory, but there's a little more i want to touch on! ok, i know i marked paranoia a few times as one of proton’s character traits, so here is my caveat; i’m sort of oversimplifying it. i don’t mean to imply that proton has a pervasive pattern of fearful thinking, but rather that he is persistently and unjustifiably suspicious of almost everyone and everything under the sun. i touched on this in an earlier post, but proton's time in team rocket has given him trust issues out the wazoo. some of his polarizing personality is due to the palpable mistrust with which he treats new people, and it likely took a concentrated effort to get proton to use a mobile phone for work purposes, when he’s so averse to being easily contacted.

[rcketbutcher]

♡ + catalyst.

♡  + headcanon meme

ngl you’re kinda spooking me with how spot on you've been picking up his character, because if i had to choose one word to describe proton, this would probably be it. 

he is absolutely fucking fascinated by cause and effect. since childhood, he’s been the kind of person who’s constantly asking “what if” questions, and testing for the results. he’s got a scar on one leg from the time he climbed a tree as high as he could, and purposefully threw himself off to see what would happen. studying cause and effect has always been his primary way of learning about the world, and it’s shaped a lot of the decisions he’s made, including the one to join team rocket. 

at the present, this fascination is focused almost exclusively on people, because as far as he’s concerned, people are the only unknown variables left. information extraction is considered one of proton’s specialties, and that’s largely due to his very scientific approach to interaction with others, even those who he may think of favorably. he likes to see what someone can be pushed to do, and how much it takes, and how they change as a result.

fresh recruits are among proton’s favorite targets, and in some cases, this approach actually produces formidable and extremely capable agents. in other cases, however, it can ruin them. one of his m.o.’s is to force someone who has a personal code into a mission that requires them to break it. he’s always gotten a particularly strong sense of satisfaction from causing disillusionment in someone else.