Calima Queries

[Calima]

Answering questions here to avoid cluttering up the sandbox thread.

[anthusiasm]

Yay! :D
So, Aiden seems cool. What's his tinker specialty? Is he an OC or from something else (asking because I know his username is from LOTR)? Are you willing to answer questions about his backstory, or is that spoiler territory? What are his hobbies besides villainy?

[Calima]

First off, Aiden is not an OC, he's Fëanor from The Silmarillion (so very correct reference spotting, there). His tinker specialty has to do broadly with pattern recognition and duplication - he's good at working with modular designs, or things like crystals that have organized structures. It also makes it easier from him to incorporate concepts from other tinkers, although not with the same level of comfort as, say, Dragon. He likes to play around with light.

His backstory is closely adapted from Fëanor's - i.e., parallel situation with his mother dying when he's quite young, his father remarrying, the tension with his half-siblings. Anything more specific about how that's implemented in the Worm-verse might be spoilery, although if it turns out not to be I'd be happy to explain in more detail later.

Villainy's more of a sideline for him. When he's not inventing, he's into linguistics and loves coming up with conlangs. He's a huge speculative fiction geek, to the surprise of absolutely no one. He would travel lots if he had more money, and has intense and idiosyncratic political opinions which he enjoys ranting about at great length. He studies psychology intermittently but also kind of hates it. He tends to pick up minor interests, focus on them obsessively for days or weeks, and then forget they ever existed. His lab is very cluttered. He does not have an active social life.

[DanielH]

I assume what he thinks he’s doing with the money, and whether or not it’s actually necessary, are spoilers for either this or Worm itself.

He has poor visual processing, and it’s implied he has poor autiory processing also. Can you give more details about this, either the reasons why or effects these have on him?

[Calima]

What he's doing with the money is a spoiler for this and for worm, but it's going to get cleared up very, very quickly.

The sensory processing issues are because he is autistic. He keeps the volume in his helmet muted because he tends towards shutdowns when he's overstimulated and that is not fun at best and really dangerous if you're in cape fight. The visual processing issues are more that he has trouble differentiating visual stimuli and tracking, so he has some subroutines in his helmet that do it for him and stick flashy lights on anything significant. In civilian life, he has a marked tendency to walk into static objects.

[Kappa]

I last read the Silmarillion when I was about ten, and I barely remember enough to recognize Feanor's name - what's his deal, if you don't mind explaining? XD

[Lambda]

IIRC he created the Silmarils and at least one of the major alphabets.

[PlainDealingVillain]

I'm pretty sure you remember correctly. He's basically Tolkein's tastefully-Mary-Sue self-insert. People who care about the Silmarillion and/or speak/write Elvish pretty much universally have Strong Opinions about Feanor one way or the other. He was the greatest jeweler ever (according to pretty much everybody) and also made The Best Script For All Elvish Ever (according to him, and his sons, and their friends, and about half the fans of the book).

Also, unimportant question for Calima: After briefly tumblr-stalking you, do you know the user paradife-loft at all well? Because I've met them in meatspace a few times and actually they're a significant chunk of my sample size for the above generalization.

[Calima]

Kappa, what the others have said is pretty much right. Especially the bit about silm fans having strong opinions about him. (PlainDealingVillain, I'll admit I twitched a bit when you described him as a mary sue).

That said, everything that's been said above is pretty much accurate. He's an Elven prince, he's really really good at lots of things, and he's pretty much the first elf to openly defy the Valar (like gods in that setting). In slightly more detail - he was born in Valinor (essentially paradise), but his mother died soon after as a result (not supposed to happen, it's paradise and also elves are immortal). Then his father remarried (really not supposed to happen, it's the only case of an elf doing this ever). End result: lots of insecurity and sibling rivalry and eventually rage against the heavens (which to be fair is also coming out of a lot of other things as well. like the Valar being really terrible at their jobs.) The Mary Sue thing is admittedly arguable, but the self-insert thing is a bit more tenuous - Tolkien's canonical self-inserts tend to be more slightly helpless scholar types. And the way the text treats Fëanor is pretty negative w/r/t his the moral status of his actions. I think that Fëanor shared a lot of traits with Tolkien, but Tolkien didn't exactly like him. Although, again, arguable.

PlainDealingVillain - paradife-loft and I are very good friends! I have pretty much exactly the same views as them on Fëanor and how he's treated in fandom. Probably moreso, actually, than I do with more than one or two other people.

[Kappa]

Nifty.

What's his screenname mean? XD