Aedre is the first character I specifically had plans to RP with from the beginning. Also the first I seriously wanted to play the game with, as opposed to wandering about listlessly (I've been poking the game since 2006, off and on again) I thought I'd want to get into it eventually, and that took longer than expected because lore, and RL.
Somehow it's been two years.
Aedre's composition in a lot of ways reflects my skill level in EVE, there's something avatar-like about him, which is maybe the opposite of Mary-sue - He kind of sucks, and so do I. It grated on me tremendously to have a sort of tough-looking guy and just be
bad. Why not make someone sort of naive instead?
I sure as heck don't have to live up to anything on a KM looking like this. So he's self-depreciating too. He considers himself to be normal-looking, but Capsuleers are so intimidating generally speaking, that to compete seems kind of ridiculous. Being new to something everyone else is already good at - or, already
looks like they are anyway - has sort of become a persistent character trait. Aedre and I will probably be kicking ass before he'd be willing assert himself with other capsuleers.
As for the wish fulfillment aspects? Doesn't everyone want to be sort of average and handsome with planetside bank? Sounds like you can't go wrong with that really. But I guess that's a safe answer.
Being from Caille itself might seem like specialness-fishing, but the point was to be from a privileged city, so why not the believable extreme? There's also a little bit more written about the place than other places of similar level. I had two years to really put a tack into where exactly Aedre's from, an I chose Caille pretty carefully, I think.
The world of EVE is shitty for most, but perfectly clean and futuristic for some. I wanted to see the perspective of someone who hasn't had to drag themselves through EVE's various hells. It's not an
interesting backstory, but it probably ends up being uncommon - having a spread is good for RP. Aedre left because he cares about stuff, but EVEhell is pretty difficult to leap into feet first if you haven't been tempered by it.
There's definitely some elements of my experience I thread in to my vision of Caille (and how it's affected Aedre) and the privileged section of the Federation. I liked Caille, because it was older - Our city is also one of the older ones in North America, so there's some feels-parallels there, too, pride and such, the source of culture be that true at all or not, that kind of thing. We're named a culture capital, but
whose? Ourselves. We're an island city sitting in a province we don't identify with sitting in a country we don't identify with, sitting one hours' north of bananas America. The idea that we even
could understand anything of our neighbors' experiences is pretty silly and often proves to be insulting. Caille doesn't
represent anyone either realistically, despite being the birthplace of the whole thing. The 'city state' that is really only interested in itself lends itself to 'writing what you know'.
I also think now that Capsuleers have been around for a decade, the idea that you could have
grown up with the fact of them pretty interesting. He hangs onto the baseliner image that Capsuleers are terrifying to some degree, all of them, and that they can't be trusted. This mostly explains his absence up to this point, so that has an emphasis because
OOC, but he is starting to realize that's unsustainable realistically and that he really
should be mingling for sanity's sake.
There's where he's starting from, anyway. I have no idea where he'll go from here. That'll be up to his interactions over time. I think it's open more or less. Will he grow more jaded? Less nervous?
More so? Interactions are the only way he's going to move, now. Looking forward to it.