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@karthmin

*swoops in*

I am here!

Hm….

*surveys characters*

Let’s use for this exercise….. Shadow! He’s a fun guy who needs lots of hugs(*cough* though when do any of my characters not need hugs…) and has a cool wolf-deer-thing as a pet/companion. Like I said, fun guy.

Shadow has quite a few external needs–kill his father, defeat the rebels, gain the Emperor’s(I hate calling him this since empires are so overused in fiction, but that’s pretty much what he is…. so yeah.)trust, rescue his sister(who is held captive by his father/the rebels), kill Kirin and his little posse(because they keep causing trouble for him)–but we’ll use his main two needs, since they tie directly into his main internal need. These are: kill his father, and rescue his sister.

And what is his main internal need?

*clears throat*

To be loved, or noticed. On the outside, Shadow(His really name is Haydin, but he uses Shadow for… reasons.) is a very…. obnoxious, demanding, privileged, and slightly spoiled person to his soldier’s point of view(and any one who meets him….). He’s loud, rude, has no respect for authority figures, seems to have no real care for his soldier’s safety, and constantly is demanding things from people no matter how hard they’re trying. He’s self-centered, egotistical, and… bratty, basically.

To put it shortly, he isn’t a very nice person. Not that he’s necessarily a bad person, he just is one of those people that once you meet them, you go out of your way to avoid them. XD But he’s like this for a reason–the kid wants attention. Love. Shadow’s father was once a noble in the country of Nagaria, before it surrendered to the Emperor. Shadow’s father(Erabrus) tried to overthrow the Emperor because of his love for power, and was defeated. He managed to escape, however, and then joined a rebel force fighting against the Emperor, which he now manipulates in his quest to overthrow the Emperor and rule the world himself. (Yeah. Great guy.)

But growing up, he had two children–Haydin, and Vyrn. A son and a daughter, twins. Erabrus had married his wife for one reason and one reason only, however–her power/master, as a Stormmaster. Erabrus himself was a Shadowmaster(like Haydin, guess why his alias is Shadow.). Erabrus knew that magical/mastery ability was inherited from bloodlines, and he wanted the ultimate weapon–a dual wielder. A Stormmaster and Shadowmaster in one person, a child that he could raise to be his key to ruling the world. So due to the fact only Haydin inherited Shadow-Affinity and nothing else and Vyrn got neither of these, his twin son and daughter were mostly ignored for their entire life. His wife he manipulated and tried to have more children with, but she and the third child died in childbirth. After that, he grew desperate enough to try a half-baked plan to take down the Emperor, which failed, and he barely escaped with his life, taking Vyrn with him and leaving a 15-year-old Haydin to fend for himself.

By then, the damage was already done. Haydin was abandoned, thought useless by his father, and had been half disliked/half feared by his mother, because he looked so much like his father.

So…. how exactly does this tie into his external/internal needs? Well, his external needs are to kill his father(to avenge his family for the terror he put them through, basically), and to rescue his sister(to get back the one thing he has left to care about/protect). His internal need is to be loved and noticed(because all his childhood he was treated like a failed experiment and ignored).

So Shadow feels that if he can complete his external needs, he will complete his internal needs of being loved/noticed. Because if he can get rid of the thing(his father) who caused his family so much pain, and bring back those who he loves and who love him(his sister), then everything will be alright. (He really just wants to be alright…. poor kid.)

As to how he meets his internal need(of being loved)… he gets his family(and his sister is part of that, meeting his external goal). In the shape of a make-shift patched together little group of himself, his sister Vyrn, Kirin, Jax, and a few others. But to get this, his entire worldview has to shift first–he is on the “bad side” at first, and must first join then gain the trust of the “good side” to gain this family. He must go from trying to gain his needs through causing others(his father, his men) pain, to fighting for others and trying to bring them happiness.

There’s a reason I like this character so much–he and Kirin are so very much alike, and yet very different at the same time. They both have the same basic need–to be loved. They both are very self-centered and must go through drastic changes to get their needs–but they are both so very different. They complement each other, but still are different and unique enough to not seem like copies of each other. I’m not sure if you could accurately call them foil characters, but I guess that’s the closest archetype-thingy you could compare them to. XD They’re sort of like rivals…. but on a more psychological level than physical. It’s almost like rivalry character growth/development than some rivaling goal.

So…. yeah. Internal and external needs.