2 posts tagged “character development”

Yesterday I had the opportunity to grab some comics, among them a couple of the old Quicksilver monthly series. I've been collecting them off and on - not exactly /avidly/ - but... well, I just can't help myself when it comes to a Pietro or Kurt-centric book. Especially not when it's in the 25 cent bins.

Reading through them got me thinking about the pitfalls of superspeed. I've contemplated it in the past, of course, and I've tried to bring it into RP a bit, but it's inspired me to highlight it a bit more. Especially as Pietro comes into his own in fighting ability - something which I've occasionally worried about in regards to the possibility of quasi-twinkishness - I think it might be good to play out the obvious disadvantages that his powers put him in. Why? Because it helps to balance him, of course. And I can't deny the appeal of embarrassing Pietro from time to time.

So, I'm thinking that - perhaps as a result of training - his powers are somehow intensifying. I'm not really going to make him /faster/, though I figure that training has increased both his speed and his accuracy at this point. Rather, I'm intending on making his power more pervasive. It /does/ crop up in his speech (more often as of late, in fact), but in terms of other ordinary things - for example, eating or walking - I can see it causing him much more difficulty than it does currently. Also, I've touched a few times upon his impatience, as everything happens relatively slowly compared to the speed of his brain functions and movements. I'd like to explore this more - and by bringing him up to a new plateau on terms of powers, it might force him to contend with it more.

This was primarily inspired by a scene in which Pietro is having dinner with his wife Crystal and the other Inhumans. To summarize, he was very uncomfortable - as he was well aware that Crystal's family hates his guts - and as a result there's quite a bit of internal bitching that's fairly amusing. Heh. When it comes time for the meal, he's having a difficult time staying still - as he says "it takes the staff three lifetimes" to serve them - and when he finally gets to eat, he struggles to pace himself for the sake of politeness... and still finishes before anyone else has taken a bite. Heh. I might scan in the page and the page following as his embarrassment is really rather funny - and it makes a good point on his frustrations/source of his occasional bitchiness. Heh. After he finishes eating, he attempts to occupy himself by catapulting peas into his mouth and generally moping as he waits for the others to "lazily chew their cud".

... As a side note, this same issue has a line that made me literally LOL. Pie's talking to Wanda and the dialogue goes as follows:

Wanda: Pietro! Are you /still/ pouting?

Pietro: Well, /someone/ must. There's enough forced cheerfulness around here to appall a Spice Girl.

I've been thinking a lot about this interesting little situation that's cropped up between Pietro and Rogue - probably too much, since I started daydreaming while drawing at work the other day (but it was such a /slow/ day!) - and I'm still not sure how he'll react when he inevitably finds out about The Kiss. For all his predictable qualities I find it funny how /unpredictable/ Pietro can be. I think he's finally starting to break down that wall he's put up - that facade of being a complete ass. Not to say that he isn't an ass, of course. Just not a /complete/ one. But it's easier to write oneself off that way and easier to deal with the consequences that come from it versus those that come from serious, sincere relationships.

After all the fighting - physical, verbal and emotional - I think he's starting to get tired of the posturing - or at the very least, he's finding himself in need of a haven of sorts. To this point, Wanda has been the only one around whom he's felt even marginally comfortable enough to voluntarily show 'softer' sides of himself - signs that he actually thinks (some) things through under that narcissistic, quasi-apathetic exterior. I've also come to the conclusion that the more out of place, unfamiliar or otherwise off his game he feels around someone the more he swears - it's a sort of balance mechanism, a subconscious defense.

So now that he's starting to let himself open up to Rogue - even a tiny bit - that means he's going to feel all the more betrayed when he finds out about that one little kiss. For reasons I'm still discovering (yes, my Pietro-muse feeds me hints from time to time), he's resisted the undeniable urge to screw around since he's hooked up with Rogue. And for a guy who's basically been in relationships /for/ the nookie, that's saying something. So to find out that she kissed this random guy - because to /him/ Nikolai /is/ random (no offense to the char or player :) ) - it'll be like a slap in the face. And I speculate that it will hurt Pietro's pride on some level to think that she 'beat him to it' on the screwing around issue - yes, that's a twisted concept of masculinity he has going on. I still don't know if he'll try to 'level the playing field'. So much of his reaction depends on /how/ he finds out. But in any case, I think he's going to be positively sick for a while after everything is out in the open (well, /however/ much comes out).

[Edit: Now without that weird snippet about the 'Soundtrack of my Life'. Thought I'd taken that out already. *laughs*]