(no subject)
Doing a bit of an extended state of the union/development essay thing on Klavier. This is mostly my thoughts on how he's changed during the past six months of stuff in the game.
The Times They Are A-Changin'
A lot of things have changed for Klavier since around June-July. Before this point, he was in a pretty good place. Camp wasn't a big problem for him; sure, he didn't want to stay there forever, but he was fine with being there. He'd formed some pretty strong friendships with people in camp, and he also had Apollo there from his own world. One negative was Kristoph being there too, and the part where HE'D been killed by someone in camp wasn't something Klavier was enjoying much. Overall though he was solid! Klavier by nature is a guy who can brush a lot of things off and coast onward with life.
But camp has gotten successively worse for Klavier since then. First off, the axe crazy event hit and that was really disturbing for him. He attempted to kill Kristoph, attacked Deb and Austria, and generally that was really kind of uncool :(. He did get over it because he recognises that that wasn't his fault and was entirely out of his control, but he was still the one committing those acts and he won't forget about it entirely.
Apollo left camp just after this! And Klavier thought he was okay with that. Which he was, in some ways, but not in others. He had basically started taking it as a given that he and Apollo were in this place together, and since they'd arrived together that they'd probably go home together too. Only no, this didn't happen. He's glad Apollo got out, but also kind of bitter because he wasn't able to leave and was left with Kristoph as the only person he knew from home. But okay, whatever, he can handle that. The murder case fell into his custody by default and he does keep up with it. Klavier is, as far as canon shows, pretty good at being a solo operator. So he can keep on top of both the Debussey case and trying to also locate Kristoph's killer.
Then, October rolled around, and he was sent the invitation from Masque. NEVER HAS HE MORE REGRETTED ACCEPTING AN INVITATION IN HIS LIFE. Playing in the Cry Wolf game he was branded in the neck, forced to vote on people knowing they'd be killed if ousted, got horribly killed himself, then spent a few terrifying days running around defenseless in the underground labs before Masque was killed. I'll get to the effects of this in a bit but it's enough to say that that whole experience was really quite bad for his sanity and confidence.
Paradise City
After escaping the CFUW game, Klavier had a difficult time readjusting to "normal". I didn't play it out much, but I basically assumed he didn't leave the Lawyertarium for days, if not weeks, because he just didn't have the nerve to. Up until then, Klavier had thought that while camp could be dangerous, it was never really a serious issue. The worst it tended to do was throw out some weird monsters, explosions, or scare you in some bizarre way. He had, in general, never been in serious life-threatening/ending danger to this extent. So it was traumatic for him and he didn't really know how to deal with it. He decided to basically stay indoors and away from most people until he felt okay enough to behave like "himself" again. And he did get there, though he's still a fair bit more subdued than he was before all this happened. It's not terribly noticable because over the course of camp he's toned down the more flamboyant parts of his personality gradually; this just pushed it a bit further along.
So he got back into a stable-ish place and then the new year arrived! Along with a pass out of camp for a day! THERE WAS NO QUESTION ABOUT WHETHER TO TAKE IT OR NOT, he just went. He never considered visiting another world or anything, it was always going to be straight home with Klavier. Because he misses home a lot, and he's started to really notice it lately. Home is where he's in his element, knows how to do his work, and knows how everything fits together. Camp is where he continually fails to accomplish what he wants, where half the stuff makes no logical sense, and where he got into serious trouble he couldn't get out of. So off he went.
And he spent his vacation day doing things that were VERY NORMAL. This was important! He went to his apartment and bummed around watching television, reading the paper, eating cereal... very normal household activities. After that, he did things that were still normal for him - checking prison to make sure Kristoph was there, sorting out his story with his agent - and then went to visit the Wright Agency. That was all well and good until Apollo started to press him about the Debussey case. Klavier got to like Apollo during their time in camp, and was cool working with him. And yes, he did in fact have a lot of new information about the Debussey case. But he didn't want to give it all to him. Klavier told him the bare facts, and that's it, ignoring Apollo's attempts to get more information out of him. He flat out refused to give any more than he wanted to. After that the matter was dropped and they went on dumb shopping adventures.
Crawling in my Skin
I can say pretty easily that Klavier stonewalling Apollo's questions was deliberate on his part, and not a spur of the moment thing. He'd already decided before he left that he wasn't going to tell Apollo or Trucy that he'd been killed by a monster and been terrorised for days, and that that was the reason he got all of this new information. In fact he plans to never tell anyone back in the real world what happened. Klavier doesn't want this part of camp, in particular, to bleed back into his life when he finally goes home. He figures he can keep it secret and just NEVER MENTION IT EVER to anyone, and no one will ever notice and he can carry on just fine \o/. He can't help the fact that people in camp know about it, but he can damn sure never tell anyone on the outside.
For example, if Apollo were to walk back into camp right now and demand to know what he'd been hiding, Klavier would still not tell him. And he'd make a reasonable effort to delay him finding out; not completely prevent, because he's not stupid. He knows it would get out eventually. But he would want to keep it to himself as long as possible, since he doesn't want to think about it. He's done a good job repressing the worst parts of what he went through in order to get back to what he thinks is normal. If someone like Apollo started INTERROGATING him about it, he would probably not cope well at all. He would either up and leave, or get into a screaming match with them. As much as Klavier would like to think he's handling this just fine, he really would not if he got pressed on it too much.
And, of course, he would cope even less well if Masque suddenly appeared in camp again, or he got trapped underground by himself. He would, to put it lightly, flip his shit. I don't know exactly how he would react, but it would be badly.
I Have No Good Song Title For This, I Fail
"But Klavier, don't you think that sounds pretty emo and dire for a character who's pretty much a sparkly doof?" Yes, yes it does. BASICALLY. This is stuff I take into consideration when playing him, but ultimately it doesn't come up much if at all in threads. It has presented itself in his actions at times. Still, it's in ways that aren't very noticable. As I mentioned above, he's more subdued in general these days. He's still got that charming egocentric personality and he still thinks he's god's gift to the music world, but the stretches where he has more serious conversations have increased. This isn't too strange for him, because if you take note of his dialogue in the game itself, he is generally pretty sensible in court if you ignore the air guitaring and music references.
The most notable change in his daily interactions is that every so often he'll put on a bit of an act with his behaviour rather than it being natural. When he was talking to Apollo and Trucy back home in L.A., a large part of that was Klavier putting on a performance. He's a rockstar; he knows how to put on a show and present himself the way he wants. So when he went back to talk to those two for a day, it was a matter of "YES, I AM FINE :) I AM HANDLING EVERYTHING SPLENDIDLY :) DON'T ASK ME ABOUT THAT AGAIN HERR FOREHEAD :) LET'S GO SHOPPING". It's not so much that he was lying, it was more that it was really important to him that they saw him the way they did when they left: the same. One day is not enough time to get into anything deeper than that. He does it during camp conversations occasionally as well, in that if a subject is bothering him, he won't always get visibly upset. He carries on like :) this, though it doesn't tend to last long, especially with people he's close to. Klavier isn't someone who hides his feelings much in the game, and he generally has trouble with pretending not to be angry/upset/scared when it's really affecting him. Mostly, he doesn't want to be asked questions he knows he'll have a hard time answering.
But, in general, Klavier is pretty resilient. He gets through canon without too much drama, and I want to apply the same nature to him in camp. It's merely a matter of camp's drama being much, much more traumatic than canon's, and it's harder for him to deal with. Ideally he should talk to someone about it but... yeah. He doesn't want to because that will ruin his nice plan of pretending that once he leaves camp it will never bother him again. And that plan is FOOLPROOF.
To summarise: Klavier's matured in a lot of ways through camp, but hasn't really mastered himself enough to cope properly with the specifically horrible things that have come his way. He's doing pretty good at this point, but not as good as he'd like others to think. He misses home a lot, and thinks that once he gets there everything will be just. fine. and he can go back to his normal life. Which he doesn't want to admit is a bit beyond him, as he is right now. :)d
The Times They Are A-Changin'
A lot of things have changed for Klavier since around June-July. Before this point, he was in a pretty good place. Camp wasn't a big problem for him; sure, he didn't want to stay there forever, but he was fine with being there. He'd formed some pretty strong friendships with people in camp, and he also had Apollo there from his own world. One negative was Kristoph being there too, and the part where HE'D been killed by someone in camp wasn't something Klavier was enjoying much. Overall though he was solid! Klavier by nature is a guy who can brush a lot of things off and coast onward with life.
But camp has gotten successively worse for Klavier since then. First off, the axe crazy event hit and that was really disturbing for him. He attempted to kill Kristoph, attacked Deb and Austria, and generally that was really kind of uncool :(. He did get over it because he recognises that that wasn't his fault and was entirely out of his control, but he was still the one committing those acts and he won't forget about it entirely.
Apollo left camp just after this! And Klavier thought he was okay with that. Which he was, in some ways, but not in others. He had basically started taking it as a given that he and Apollo were in this place together, and since they'd arrived together that they'd probably go home together too. Only no, this didn't happen. He's glad Apollo got out, but also kind of bitter because he wasn't able to leave and was left with Kristoph as the only person he knew from home. But okay, whatever, he can handle that. The murder case fell into his custody by default and he does keep up with it. Klavier is, as far as canon shows, pretty good at being a solo operator. So he can keep on top of both the Debussey case and trying to also locate Kristoph's killer.
Then, October rolled around, and he was sent the invitation from Masque. NEVER HAS HE MORE REGRETTED ACCEPTING AN INVITATION IN HIS LIFE. Playing in the Cry Wolf game he was branded in the neck, forced to vote on people knowing they'd be killed if ousted, got horribly killed himself, then spent a few terrifying days running around defenseless in the underground labs before Masque was killed. I'll get to the effects of this in a bit but it's enough to say that that whole experience was really quite bad for his sanity and confidence.
Paradise City
After escaping the CFUW game, Klavier had a difficult time readjusting to "normal". I didn't play it out much, but I basically assumed he didn't leave the Lawyertarium for days, if not weeks, because he just didn't have the nerve to. Up until then, Klavier had thought that while camp could be dangerous, it was never really a serious issue. The worst it tended to do was throw out some weird monsters, explosions, or scare you in some bizarre way. He had, in general, never been in serious life-threatening/ending danger to this extent. So it was traumatic for him and he didn't really know how to deal with it. He decided to basically stay indoors and away from most people until he felt okay enough to behave like "himself" again. And he did get there, though he's still a fair bit more subdued than he was before all this happened. It's not terribly noticable because over the course of camp he's toned down the more flamboyant parts of his personality gradually; this just pushed it a bit further along.
So he got back into a stable-ish place and then the new year arrived! Along with a pass out of camp for a day! THERE WAS NO QUESTION ABOUT WHETHER TO TAKE IT OR NOT, he just went. He never considered visiting another world or anything, it was always going to be straight home with Klavier. Because he misses home a lot, and he's started to really notice it lately. Home is where he's in his element, knows how to do his work, and knows how everything fits together. Camp is where he continually fails to accomplish what he wants, where half the stuff makes no logical sense, and where he got into serious trouble he couldn't get out of. So off he went.
And he spent his vacation day doing things that were VERY NORMAL. This was important! He went to his apartment and bummed around watching television, reading the paper, eating cereal... very normal household activities. After that, he did things that were still normal for him - checking prison to make sure Kristoph was there, sorting out his story with his agent - and then went to visit the Wright Agency. That was all well and good until Apollo started to press him about the Debussey case. Klavier got to like Apollo during their time in camp, and was cool working with him. And yes, he did in fact have a lot of new information about the Debussey case. But he didn't want to give it all to him. Klavier told him the bare facts, and that's it, ignoring Apollo's attempts to get more information out of him. He flat out refused to give any more than he wanted to. After that the matter was dropped and they went on dumb shopping adventures.
Crawling in my Skin
I can say pretty easily that Klavier stonewalling Apollo's questions was deliberate on his part, and not a spur of the moment thing. He'd already decided before he left that he wasn't going to tell Apollo or Trucy that he'd been killed by a monster and been terrorised for days, and that that was the reason he got all of this new information. In fact he plans to never tell anyone back in the real world what happened. Klavier doesn't want this part of camp, in particular, to bleed back into his life when he finally goes home. He figures he can keep it secret and just NEVER MENTION IT EVER to anyone, and no one will ever notice and he can carry on just fine \o/. He can't help the fact that people in camp know about it, but he can damn sure never tell anyone on the outside.
For example, if Apollo were to walk back into camp right now and demand to know what he'd been hiding, Klavier would still not tell him. And he'd make a reasonable effort to delay him finding out; not completely prevent, because he's not stupid. He knows it would get out eventually. But he would want to keep it to himself as long as possible, since he doesn't want to think about it. He's done a good job repressing the worst parts of what he went through in order to get back to what he thinks is normal. If someone like Apollo started INTERROGATING him about it, he would probably not cope well at all. He would either up and leave, or get into a screaming match with them. As much as Klavier would like to think he's handling this just fine, he really would not if he got pressed on it too much.
And, of course, he would cope even less well if Masque suddenly appeared in camp again, or he got trapped underground by himself. He would, to put it lightly, flip his shit. I don't know exactly how he would react, but it would be badly.
I Have No Good Song Title For This, I Fail
"But Klavier, don't you think that sounds pretty emo and dire for a character who's pretty much a sparkly doof?" Yes, yes it does. BASICALLY. This is stuff I take into consideration when playing him, but ultimately it doesn't come up much if at all in threads. It has presented itself in his actions at times. Still, it's in ways that aren't very noticable. As I mentioned above, he's more subdued in general these days. He's still got that charming egocentric personality and he still thinks he's god's gift to the music world, but the stretches where he has more serious conversations have increased. This isn't too strange for him, because if you take note of his dialogue in the game itself, he is generally pretty sensible in court if you ignore the air guitaring and music references.
The most notable change in his daily interactions is that every so often he'll put on a bit of an act with his behaviour rather than it being natural. When he was talking to Apollo and Trucy back home in L.A., a large part of that was Klavier putting on a performance. He's a rockstar; he knows how to put on a show and present himself the way he wants. So when he went back to talk to those two for a day, it was a matter of "YES, I AM FINE :) I AM HANDLING EVERYTHING SPLENDIDLY :) DON'T ASK ME ABOUT THAT AGAIN HERR FOREHEAD :) LET'S GO SHOPPING". It's not so much that he was lying, it was more that it was really important to him that they saw him the way they did when they left: the same. One day is not enough time to get into anything deeper than that. He does it during camp conversations occasionally as well, in that if a subject is bothering him, he won't always get visibly upset. He carries on like :) this, though it doesn't tend to last long, especially with people he's close to. Klavier isn't someone who hides his feelings much in the game, and he generally has trouble with pretending not to be angry/upset/scared when it's really affecting him. Mostly, he doesn't want to be asked questions he knows he'll have a hard time answering.
But, in general, Klavier is pretty resilient. He gets through canon without too much drama, and I want to apply the same nature to him in camp. It's merely a matter of camp's drama being much, much more traumatic than canon's, and it's harder for him to deal with. Ideally he should talk to someone about it but... yeah. He doesn't want to because that will ruin his nice plan of pretending that once he leaves camp it will never bother him again. And that plan is FOOLPROOF.
To summarise: Klavier's matured in a lot of ways through camp, but hasn't really mastered himself enough to cope properly with the specifically horrible things that have come his way. He's doing pretty good at this point, but not as good as he'd like others to think. He misses home a lot, and thinks that once he gets there everything will be just. fine. and he can go back to his normal life. Which he doesn't want to admit is a bit beyond him, as he is right now. :)d