#types of guys

[prokopetz]

Hypothesis: the real reason Deltarune is taking so long is that, as evidenced by Jevil and Spamton, Toby Fox has committed himself to inventing a type of guy for each individual chapter; over ninety percent of the game's production time to date has in fact been devoted to research and development into new types of guy.

[madnessofmen]

knight that sheds his armor like a molting crustacean to reveal another softer suit of armor underneath

[isaacsapphire]

I’ve never seen a tacticool security guard as a customer, but I worked security in college and we had one on staff - drove my boss crazy, from what I could tell.

the bulk of the guys were either actual military veterans (very punctual, nice guys, surprisingly shy/awkward based on my own stereotype of soldiers), and guys like me (students who needed a job, random losers, etc).

and then we had the guy who wanted to be a soldier, but hadn’t gone to basic, wanted to be a cop, but somehow couldn’t get a job on the police force, and so he’d ended up with us. Never caused any problems, but I’d never before seen a grown man visibly deflate when the guy running our onboarding pre-emptively explained that, as un-armed guards, we were legally prohibited from carrying personal weapons on-site, and that “personal weapons” included, but was not limited to, guns, mace, tasers, knives, and throwing stars.

apparently Gary (not his real name) had specifically hoped that his throwing stars would sneak in on a technicality.

not a bad dude, per se, just really oddly childish and dysfunctional. He did once show me his “tactical flashlight” which I must concede was kinda cool, even if it was just a normal flashlight but bumpy and in a darker color.

Other characters included a retired Navy man who’d been a kid during WW2. He was rad, would show up for every shift with 3, and only 3, things: his wood-grip stainless 1911, a Clive Cussler novel, and a sandwich (Some of us were licensed as armed guards, but I didn’t stay long enough to go for the extra certificate.)

also met several astronauts (unimaginable aura coming off of all three of these guys, also really short. Not a lot of room in the capsule)

Oh man, Gary the Mall Ninja is definitely a Type of Guy you meet in security. They tend to seem like they were dropped on their heads as babies or something, but yeah at least sometimes fine people if a little dumb and immature.

The Clive Custler guy is a treasure to the team and I hope they’re still making that Type of Guy in Millennial and younger because the Greatest/Boomer/X models were pretty solid when they remembered what words weren’t allowed on the clock anymore and could handle having women in their workplace and chain of command.

[perksofbeingahalfie]

A type of character that I'm OBSESSED with is the character who is turned into a symbol for a cause they don't believe in. The character who is cast in a story that they don't care about. The common man turned into a mythic figure, but who doesn't actually participate in the mythology.

I'm talking Jinx Arcane, who is seen as a symbol of the Zaun revolution despite the fact that she never was a freedom fighter. Any violence she committed against Piltover, her breaking the people out of jail, even her joining the fight in the finale - all of it was done for self serving reasons, it was all personal. She was never on the ground putting in the work or participating in mutual aid or even trying for an independent Zaun like Sevika or Ekko or Silco, yet she is painted on the walls and looked up to as a figure, a part to play. Not as her full person. So much so that just Isha imitating Jinx is enough to spark the fire.

Spinner from My Hero Academia is almost a c list character. He's a member of the League of Villains, but not a particularly important one. He is a follower at his core, first of Stain and then of Shigaraki. But for the final war, All For One decides to elevate him to the status of leader. He gives him additional quirks and paints him as a symbol of the heteromorph population who have been constantly oppressed and discriminated against, stirring up tension and recruiting many regular citizens who have no experience fighting to AFOs side in the final war. But at the key moment, the pivitol point that could change the tides of war, it falls apart. Because Spinner was never that figure, just a flimsy icon. He's not fighting for the heteromorph cause, he's not even fighting for AFO. He wasn't a mindless pawn, he *allowed* AFO to do these things to him, but for his own reasons. As he's deteriorating under the strain of the quirks and the pressure of the masses, he says explicitly its because he cares about Shigaraki and nothing else. Because it's personal.

In Black Sails, a story all about narratives and who you pretend to be, John Silver is literally crafted into the mythical pirate king by Flint and Billy. He plays the part of Long John Silver to a certain degree, but he's never more than an actor in a role. And at his core, Silver is a liar, a *very* good one. And so Billy and Flint forget this, they forget the fact that Silver doesn't care about the war and never has. He is a man with no past and no future, no story. A man who not only knows he's in a story, but also is one of the few to escape the constraints of the narrative by surpassing it entirely. By no longer being the character he was cast as, both textually and metatextually. He refuses the narrative, and he even has the power to do the same for Flint at the very end.

And it's not even the fact that they don't care or don't believe in the cause. Because they can and often do, though extremely temporarily. Spinner does express outrage against heteromorph discrimination, and Silver does find himself begrudgingly caring about his crew. Even Jinx can rally to save the city to some degree. But it never *really* matters to them. It's never even close to the main motivator, and a character quite literally lives and dies by their motivations. They're always operating on a different level than the other characters. Not necessarily a better or worse level, but just a purely different one. Or at least a level that the other characters don't understand/continually forget about. Most of the series, Jinx is purely reactionary, not doing things with much forethought or meaning behind it, but acting on emotional impulse. Spinner is a follower who is content with being a follower, who only really cares about his friends, his found family, not the war hes leading. And Silver is perpetually in survival mode, never dedicating himself to cause nor creed bc he doesn't allow the audience to make him into something more than a creature staying alive, regardless of what they might believe.

I dunno, there's something about characters that are made into symbols for causes they don't champion, and the rest of the characters having to deal with the fallout of their misbelief that really gets me going. They're the worms in my brain that keep coming back around

[tsunflowers]

[panvani]

I guess I could do what every Latino ex Catholic who still wants religion does and just convert to Buddhism

[motherfukinluna]