User blog:DustpeltX/Making Of: Shamrock and Raspberry

Hi Fanon, Dust here with another Making Of. It's been a while but I know some people already know what this is about. Either way I'll reiterate what this is.

My Making Of is a series of blog post that's one-half guide and one-half shamelessly showing off my OCs. I planned to do these as a series either every time I think I need to make a new character or when I'm re-vamping one of my older characters. Just a habit I want to start so that I can explain my thinking, justify my choices, improve future writings, and maybe gain some popularity.

So far I've done a post on these characters which you can find them here:


 * Chiyo Hāto
 * Heart
 * Asher C. Stahl
 * Rayne Annrosé

I encourage any one of you to do the same too, I feel it tends to make you think critically about your character and how you approach them. Anyway, without further explaination, let us begin.

Introduction
Let's begin with the conception of the characters themselves. Initially, Shamrock, whom I will refer to as Rock from now on, and Raspberry, whom I will refer to as Razz, were one character. Or rather, the character was just Rock. I don't remember, but the core idea was to rediscover something I've tried to do in my previous characters.

This was the concept of a mask.

See, the problem I found with the masks present in my other characters, namely Selena Schiess, Alice Schiess, and quite recently, Rayne Annarosé, is that they aren't inhibitory masks. That term may be confusing, and it should, because I just made it up, but my definition of an inhibitory mask is that of a face that someone wears not out of free will. This stemmed from a philosphy that I came across in a Religion course during my highschool days and is perhaps one of the only things of thought that stuck with me. That was Levina's Face-to-Face philosophy.

Interstingly enough this philosphy was taught to me by perhaps one of the most God-loving teachers in the school. I loved that teacher because despite being devoutly religious, he was also extremely tolerant of other world views. He was realistic, and all in all, one of the few positive influences I've ever had in the mandatory religion courses of the Catholic School system. Anyway, irrelevant to the discussion, just thought this cute old man deserves some recognition, even if he doesn't know it.

Back to Levina's Face-to-Face philosophy. It's rather long and complicated so I found a blog's explanation of it.

To first understand the philosophy, one has to understand Levinas himself. This philosophy and his understanding of the world grew from the aftermath of World War II of which, Levinas served as a French soldier and as a POW in Germany. He and his family were of course, Jewish, and most of his family died in the Holocaust.

The Face-to-Face philosophy focuses on two things, the "Other" and the "Face", two terms which are defined here from this blog. Understand all of that? Well in short, it just means we as human beings communicate with "others" through "the face". Of course, Other in this context just means a presence of an individual while The Face is the whole exposed being of an individual that allows communication to the Other.
 * 1) “Other” (sometimes capitalized, sometimes not) usually translates the French word autrui, which means “the other person,” “someone else” (other than oneself). It is thus the personal other, the other person, whoever it is, that each of us encounters directly, or experiences the traces of, every day. Of course, we encounter a multiplicity of others, but Levinas more often uses the singular “other” to emphasize that we encounter others one at a time, face to face.
 * 2) By “face” Levinas means the human face (or in French, visage), but not thought of or experienced as a physical or aesthetic object. Rather, the first, usual, unreflective encounter with the face is as the living presence of another person. Thus, when we come "face to face" with another person, the experience is a social and ethical one (rather than intellectual, aesthetic, or merely physical). “Living presence,” for Levinas, would imply that the other person (as someone genuinely other than myself) is exposed to me--that is, is vulnerably present--and expresses him or herself simply by being there as an undeniable reality that I cannot reduce to images or ideas in my head. This impossibility of capturing the other conceptually or otherwise reveals the other’s “infinity” (i.e., irreducibility to a finite [bounded] entity over which I can have power). The other person is, of course, exposed and expressive in other ways than through the literal face (e.g., through speech, gesture, action, and bodily presence generally), but the face is the most exposed, most vulnerable, and most expressive aspect of the other’s presence.

Got it? Good. Now we jumb back to the idea of a Mask.

A mask aimes to obsucre the face it therefore is a device that limits the communication between oneself and the Other. This allows people And character to distance themselves away from the others for whatever reason. Of course, maska aren't limits to physical objects but a personality an individual wears count as well; they all serve the same purpose.

So for the characters of Selena Schiess, Alice Schiess, and Rayne Annarosé, all three wae a mask for initially the same reason, to hide their true selves. I won't get into their reasoning as the concept of a mask isn't hard to grasp. Now that's all fine and well but again, these masks aren't too creative. Simply put, masks can always be removed, always put back on. It simply comes down to choice. So what if there wasn't a choice?

Shamrock G. Raelyn


Okay, that was a pretty good transition, gotta pat myself on the back for that one. Good job Dust.

As I hinted, Rock is a "What if?" thought experiment of of Levina's philosophy. Create a character who wears a mask not by choice, thus obscuring the Face and disrupting communication with the Other. Rather simple really.

I started out by creating the mask which was inspired by the generic visor designs of mechas. So things like like Raiden's visor and Gundams were some inspirations I took.

However, there had to be a reason for the mask to be there and to look like a helmet as well so how did I justify that? How COULD I justify that?

Racing. Of course!

Wait... racing? Helmet? Motorcycles....

This sounds like Celty from Durarara!

And yes, that was literally the thought process. With that done, I designed the the helmet and sent off for a commission. However, there was a problem. The characters sole existence by itself would be quite boring. Rock would essentially be the loneliest guy in the world with no stable relationships.

Essentially, a dead character.

I had to give him something to hold on to, something that goes beyond this barrier as an ideal representation of what could be in a relationship.

Raspberry Driver
That came in the form of Razz.

Now Razz, like any other character, had to be interesting in some aspect and at the time I didn't really need to think about what I wanted Razz to be. The somewhat opposite of Rock, personality wise anyway.

I also inadvertantly paid homage to perhaps a very beautiful story coming from the most disgusting of places. Hentai.

Specifically ShindoL, one of the most talented doujinshi artists in the genre of snuff and all things unholy. Regardless, the story was very good for a porn book and the character repectfully strong. It made me really think about the landscape in turns of amputation and other disabilities in both the real-world and in fiction. It made me really try to understand the mindset and lives of these types of people which was a humbling experience.

Now, full disclaimer before somebody calls me a shitlord. I myself am not disabled or handicapped in anyway. I'm one of the very fortunately majority that don't have to experience those kinds of things nor do I hope to in the future, but I do understand that people with these conditions are still, at the bottom line, people. People like us.

I will never, EVER claim to know what it feels like to be handicapped, but the character of Razz aims to be a person that I think, a lot of differently-abled could be, just like how everyone looks up to superheros.

That also transitions to Razz being a deconstruction and criticism of differently-abled OCs in general.

See, the problem I have with most of these types of characters is that their disability does not mean anything. A common trope I find as a reviewer is where a character loses a part of their body and is replaced with a mechanical one that argueably the same or even better that the original. Which really hammers home the question, "Why have the character lose any part of their body at all if nothing changes?"

I mean, this literally happened in the show with Yang, and unless you're 12, I highly doubt anybody who really thought about this, actually thinks Yang's robot arm development was "cool" or needed. It's like they went, "Hey why don't we cut off Yang's arm? Wouldn't that be cool? Because she's a punching character?" and then some other guy went, "Yeah! And then we can give her a military-grade robot arm! Wouldn't that be cool? Because she's a punching character?"

What makes events like the loss of a body part relevant in the real world is how lackluster our current technology is in regards to accessibility to the people. I have yet to see fluid replacement of mechanical prosthetics on the large scale to robotic or even myoelectric alternatives simply because those are still considered clucky and slow.

Which makes it an understandable struggle. It's not something abled bodied people can be held accountable for not understanding, as they can't but they can at least try to understand and be mindful of it. I feel that OCs that don't try to at least acknowledge this aspect of it is simply just doing it as a gimick, not for the exploration of the hurdles that come witht he condition. To some people it might even be borderline inconsiderate. Disabilities shouldn't be glorified, but they shouldn't be ignored either.