Send Me A Character

[clonecumber]

And I will tell you my:

• First impression
• Impression now
• Favorite moment
• Idea for a story
• Unpopular opinion
• Favorite relationship
• Favorite headcanon

Experimenting with collecting my answers to this ask game over here in the comments, since Tumblr is being...Like That.

Comments

Mereel

[clonecumber]

Hello!

First impression : About as charmed as I was supposed to be, I think, while missing a significant chunk of his actual character. Didn't give him much thought besides the surface personality he presented.

Impression now : I'm pretty sure I'd have to re-read the series again to actually get a full depth of understanding about Mereel. Because holy shit does this guy have layers. So much of what seems to be going on with his character is completely blanked out to most of our POV characters, and Ordo is too close to him to really see all of his sides, or pay them any mind. Like being friends with a giant eldritch sea creature for so long your narrative forgets to mention that they are, in fact, a giant eldritch sea creature. Most of what Mereel gets up to happens in the negative spaces, since KT let him be so good at his job that no one ever catches him at it unless explicitly told. Like. Damn. He sees the blind spots characters have and he lives there.

Favorite moment : REALLY HARD TO PICK. But I am going to say it's when Mereel masterminds that whole entire thing with Ko Sai's data, hooks Ordo into it, and the only hint we have of his involvement is when Etain overhears an out-of-context blip of conversation later on where Ordo is falling apart with guilt about something ("something") and Mereel is gently patting his fraying edges back into shape and coaxing him into continuing. The way Mereel talked to Ordo, that told me it was Mereel's plan from the start, and Ordo trusted him enough to go along with it. (I feel like this is a significant part of their dynamic Kal tends to miss, honestly. It wasn't Ordo who initiated manipulating Kal in order to steal his hold-out blaster. Ordo just rolled with it.) Anyway, it was just such a stellar show of how much Mereel actually has going on? And the most obvious one in the series, since they actually own up to this one to Kal (though even then not entirely disclosing the degree of Mereel's involvement). It was brilliant and it was ruthless.

The next runner-up was Mereel being legitimately terrifying when he finds Ko Sai again (that smile that smile that smile yikes yikes yikes), and Mereel getting G'ika, and Mereel uncomfortably avoiding involving himself in Vau and Kal's conversation, and when he :O-ed Etain when Etain managed to get Ko Sai to cough up some things, and pouting when Ko Sai didn't like his lab, and his delight over the idea of babysitting Kad, but that's primarily because Mereel's personality shines through in shards in the bits of a greater whole he carefully cobbled together to fit any given moment, so no matter what scene I pick I feel like I'm leaving out a huge chunk of him. The data sub-plot is the closest I can get to pointing and going Mereel.

Idea for a story : Feral undergrad Mereel, fresh from Kamino with all these science ideas and figuring out there are people out there who will answer his questions. Before he's really learned social skills.

Unpopular opinion : (I don’t think this series really has popular opinions, but we’ll work with what we have:) I feel like there's a lot of wiggle-room in regards to how Mereel handles the Kal situation, and everyone's going to come at it differently? But personally I don't think he's actually as much of a playboy as he lets people think he is. Like, I believe he still is to an extent, and I even think he was for a short time after he got off Kamino because it was a bit addicting, honestly, the immediate validation and Kal's almost-approval, but he burned out and "outgrew" it all pretty fast. It's just easier to let people (read: Kal) think that's where he's at, put on a bit of a show sometimes, because it keeps them off his back while he fixates more and more on Ko Sai and the possibility of an aging cure.

(And because not being a rampant playboy makes him nervous about how he's actually supposed to behave, along with some confusion because he likes sex and clubs and people, but the problem is he only knows how to be a person who likes those things in one narrow sort of way, so he’s also just going through the normal aspect of sorting out his adult identity here. (He’s developmentally barely in his twenties at series start and badly set up for success here; there is no way in hell he has his shit together.) On top of being at the awkward point of still desperately wanting to "win" Kal's attention and that having shaped a significant chunk of his personality for years while also getting enough distance from Kal to start cluing in about some uncomfortable things.  "but Kal would be so disappointed" is a constant anxiety for him, and going back and forth on how he feels about that thought, from "I don't care"/"Nevermind I care a lot actually" ...repeat ad infinitum. I feel like we sort of see him start to stabilize and settle into himself as the series goes on, though.)

Favorite relationship : Ordo! I have...a lot of feelings about these two, honestly. Corr is a very close runner-up, though.

Favorite headcanon : His relationship with Gaib and TK-0 is actually a genuine friendship but both organic individuals treat it like that one meme where they're staring each other down across the table with awkward discomfort and vague disgust because they have...feelings...about the other person. ("The feeling is friendship, but neither of them had ever experienced it before.") Neither of them will ever admit this on pain of death. They are business associates.

TK-0 read somewhere that you needed to make sure your organic had plenty of socialization opportunities with other organics or they'd get, like, sad or something. He's satisfied with this arrangement.