any pointers for writing fade? neon is my current fixation & i wanna write abt her bc i wanna get back into writing. fadeshock is rlly cute but idk fade all too well 🤍
Oh, this is a fabulous question, I'm going to have a fantastic time answering this, thank you!
First, I want to make clear though that this is just my opinion and my take on Fade's character. You're welcome to write her how you like and if you disagree with my headcanons, that's okay! You're welcome to form your own.
I think when writing Fade it's important to keep in mind that her driving force is loyalty. Almost everything she does is in service to someone she cares about - usually him - and she will pursue this service even to her own detriment.
She blackmailed the Protocol even though they would probably have killed her if she failed, and when they offered to help her and gave her information on how to further her search, she joined them. She throws herself so hard into her work it makes her seriously unwell at times, such as when she got so distressed and sleep-deprived that Brimstone needed to send her on a wellness vacation to Vietnam to recover.
Through her voicelines and additional lore (such as the audio recording of Cypher interrogating her) we can glean that her manner of speaking is informal and "masc". She calls people "abi" in the same way one might say "dude" or "bro". She's friendly with her teammates, offering them coffee and encouragement (and we also know she has a network of friends in the Protocol, with Clove's D&D club for example). She's arrogant and clearly recognises her own skills, but on top of that, we also know that she's heavily depressive, angry, and fearful. She's terrified of losing him, but we know she's beginning to believe he might be dead from when they didn't find him in the Hourglass cells. "You live until you're forgotten, right?"
When I'm writing her I tend to write from the perspective of a woman who's deeply afraid, but not for herself. She sees very little value in her own life, at least when she isn't using her life to serve. She's self-sacrificing and too easily puts herself in harms way if she believes it will protect those she loves, and when she's struggling she isolates herself. From the Vietnam situation, we've seen it takes other people reaching out for her to get the help she needs when things are dire, and when she didn't find him in Hourglass, she was very clearly upset but didn't ask for help, instead kind of solidifying in her resolve to continue the search without giving up on him.
When things are good, I think she's a pretty loving person. A lot of people depict her as edgy all the time but I think that's doing her a disservice, personally. She's depressed and self-sacrificing and I think without help she could very easily fall into dangerous patterns (I imagine she uses smoking, drinking, hookups with strangers etc to cope with how bad she feels).
That said though, she's a good person. She's warm with her teammates and has a sense of humour with them. She can be optimistic in dire situations, too, although likely this is just to avoid accepting the reality of him possibly being dead. I think when she loves someone, she does it in a way that needs communication to work, because she could otherwise love them in a way that could be smothering or overly possessive, but when she doesn't need to be permanently afraid, she'd be a great person to be in love with.
I imagine that love as a concept is very hard for her, now. This is a hc, but I imagine that after the pain of losing him and how close it's come to killing her a number of times now, she'd be terrified of loving people again. I think she'd push people away long before ever accepting she wants them, and it would take a lot of time for her to believe she deserves to love another, especially if she's falling in love before saving him. Loving someone is distraction, it's attention spent off of the trail of hunting him, but it's also shockingly vulnerable. It's putting her heart on the chopping block and hoping her partner won't cut it.
ugh, I love her. Apologies for this really long answer - I really, really love both Fade and Neon and I have a LOT to say about them both, and how they work together. I really enjoyed answering this, thank you so much for the question and I hope this can help a little!
