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pacificates) wrote2023-03-18 08:18 pm
pacificates) wrote2023-03-18 08:18 pm
rp tools | hurts, pains and traumas
As a Spirit of Compassion, Cole has a form of telepathy in which he can reads the minds of others — more specifically their hurts, worries, and traumas. He is drawn to those hurts, in a wish to help them. He can deal with this in handfuls of ways: often offering words of encouragement, or gentle nudging to people to act, or perhaps revealing information the person does not know. Other times he can simply take the hurt away and make a person forget it. Sometimes it may a case be reminding a person of something comforting, like reminding a dying soldier of a soup his mother made to comfort him in his last moments.
Often, Cole comments on those hurts — speaks them out loud as he comes to him, often in cryptic ways. Here are a few examples of such within canon.
"She is bare-faced, embarrassed, and she doesn't know. She thinks it's because of her. He hurts, an old pain from before, when everything sang the same. You're real, and it means everyone could be real. It changes everything, but it can't."
— Cole's comments on a Inquisitor Lavellan romance with Solas, had he removed her vallaslin and then broke off the relationship with her.
"An old name burns inside armor that shouldn't fit, lit by faces of the children he couldn't save."
— Cole's comments on Blackwall and his past actions.
"He sounds right again with the chains in place, but the music makes him sad."
— Cole's comments on Cullen, if he is told to resume taking Lyrium.
"A breath-caught smile from the Enchanter as the candle lights. The walls are safe; she will never be hungry again."
— Cole's comments on Vivienne's relationship with Duke Bastien.
For the sake of sanity/rp purposes, I've included a little fill out form for Cole's abilities to help me write out these pains, due to Cole's nature of speaking them aloud often — or him offering solutions/comfort to others, considering a character's pain doesn't need be something they're actively thinking about for Cole to sense it. Basically, give me food to work with! Please fill out for threads!
For Deer Country players: please feel free to add in game-specific hurts/memories /things in game that would comfort them, as well as canon ones.
no subject
Canon: Star Wars: Rebels
Character Memory/Fear/Pain: name one, name several.
1. Ezra's parents were arrested for treason when he was seven. Ezra spent nearly 8 years as a street orphan, surviving through theft, scavenging, and petty cons. The exact date of his parents' arrest isn't clear, but I head canon it was on Empire Day, the anniversary of the establishment of the Empire, which is also Ezra's birthday (to the day, he was born alongside the Empire). It makes sense for an Imperial show of force to happen on that 'holiday' and explains how deep Ezra's aversion to his birthday is in canon. A lot of his childhood was austere and lonely.
2. Ezra eventually found a new family that genuinely deeply loved him. However they were rebels, too (all with their own trauma) and being part that family meant learning how to fight, being hunted by Imperials, and increasingly getting into real combat. By age 17, he was a commissioned officer of the Rebel Alliance, part of true guerilla warfare.
3. While the Maul of Trench is from an earlier point in history, Ezra's canon relationship with Maul is very traumatic. He very briefly trusted Maul to be a teacher in the ways of the Force (who tried to convince him to embrace the Darkside). Trust was shattered when Maul tried to kill Ezra's Jedi master, blinding Kanan instead. Ezra spent months blaming himself, and Maul never let go of his fixation on Ezra being his apprentice. The next year and half involved stalking, kidnapping, mental invasions and forced shared visions before Maul was finally killed by Obi-wan Kenobi. Ezra has tried to make his peace with all this, feels compassion for Maul as he knew him, and really does want Maul in Trench to be a better, happier person. Still, the trauma lingers.
4. Fire? Yeah, fire, at this point. Kanan died saving Ezra and rest of their family by holding back an explosion/ wall of flame. Ezra also had the duel of Mustafar, telepathically dumped into his head from Obi-wan's mind, while Obi-wan was mid-panic attack. He's since been part of a replaying ofVader's revenge setting Obi-wan on fire. There's *layers* here.
5. It's as much comfort as trauma, but part of Ezra's CRAU is he was part of a reality altering spell cast by Billy Kaplan, that gave him memories of an entire life in a vaguely New York City-ish American setting. Ezra was an orphan in that life too - (Mother in giving birth to him for that birthday trauma parallel, father in a car wreck a few years later). The good news is that Alt!Ezra had a much older brother who stepped up to raise him - Ben Bridger, the AU version of Obi-wan Kenobi. The Obi-wan of that setting agreed they could be truly brothers after the spell ended, and Ezra cherished both those memories and the choice made together. Coming to Trench and building a new relationship with an Obi-wan who welcomed him as a young Jedi, and therefore family, but without any of those shared experiences, as well of complicated relationships with the various Skywalker clan around, has been an ongoing struggle.
6. Last July Ezra was killed by Chara, for trying to stop them from mass murdering Trenchies. He spent weeks as a spirit in the Force, while the cycle of reincarnation was disrupted. He holds no grudge, and simply avoids Chara, but can't help but wonder if they'll do something like that again.
How can Cole help: Ezra is unlikely to want to forget anything, even the 'magic' memories. He's both very, very psychic for a human, and has chosen compassion to be his central guiding principle, so common ground/a spiritual brother of sorts may be an enormous help. As well as reminders that he is loved, that he can always choose more family, and that practicing compassion includes self-compassion.