Personality
Dec. 26th, 2016 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psychicshellRafael is sullen, sarcastic, distrustful...it's almost like he's a teenage boy in the throws of puberty who's had a small army of superhumans watching him like a hawk for the first sign of supervillainy for the last six years while he tries to learn how to use malfunctioning psychic powers with no teacher.
The amazing thing is that he actually DOES want to do good. He feels like his father has been overshadowing him and laughing at him from beyond the grave for his whole life, and the only way he can think of punching the smug jerk in the nose is to prove that he's the better man. He's proving it to Elemental, he's proving it to the Valor Corps, but most importantly he's proving it to himself.
He has mixed feelings about his mother. He took her last name because he didn't want any connections to his father, but he still knows that she wasn't much better than he was. He grew up with her on the run, being told stories of how Elemental was cruelly betrayed and taken down by the jealous, spiteful Valor Corps. After a few years with Hundredlives, he's realized that the truth is not so clean cut, and that the Valor Corps aren't some uniform, faceless evil. He knows in his head that she was wrong, but...She's still his mom. A kid should have a parent they can trust. Hundredlives did her best to be a good foster mom, and he does care for her, but it's just not the same.
All this leads up to a lot of anger issues. Especially when he gets in fights (which is often, when you're a superhero.). There's a lot of bubbling rage inside him that needs to be let free somehow, which leads to berserk and reckless rampages against powerful foes that leave his teammates worried sometimes.
He also has no idea how to be a normal person. He never went to school, instead picking things up from his mother. Thus his early education had about as much about how to read and write as it did about how to rob banks. Then he moved in with Hundredlives, who was more grounded than Midnight was, but still a goddamn Superhero. To him, stories about a lone caped crusader against an army of mutants are slice of life, while stories about high school students falling in love for the first time seem weird and fantastical. He knows more about the world of heroes and villains than he does about the world of regular people.
His biggest pet peeve: Back in the early 80s, Elemental did an interview with the Ace City newspaper during which he revealed some of what he knew about his species. There was a typo, and so about a quarter of the world's population still calls the species "Carinians" instead of "Carinans".
The amazing thing is that he actually DOES want to do good. He feels like his father has been overshadowing him and laughing at him from beyond the grave for his whole life, and the only way he can think of punching the smug jerk in the nose is to prove that he's the better man. He's proving it to Elemental, he's proving it to the Valor Corps, but most importantly he's proving it to himself.
He has mixed feelings about his mother. He took her last name because he didn't want any connections to his father, but he still knows that she wasn't much better than he was. He grew up with her on the run, being told stories of how Elemental was cruelly betrayed and taken down by the jealous, spiteful Valor Corps. After a few years with Hundredlives, he's realized that the truth is not so clean cut, and that the Valor Corps aren't some uniform, faceless evil. He knows in his head that she was wrong, but...She's still his mom. A kid should have a parent they can trust. Hundredlives did her best to be a good foster mom, and he does care for her, but it's just not the same.
All this leads up to a lot of anger issues. Especially when he gets in fights (which is often, when you're a superhero.). There's a lot of bubbling rage inside him that needs to be let free somehow, which leads to berserk and reckless rampages against powerful foes that leave his teammates worried sometimes.
He also has no idea how to be a normal person. He never went to school, instead picking things up from his mother. Thus his early education had about as much about how to read and write as it did about how to rob banks. Then he moved in with Hundredlives, who was more grounded than Midnight was, but still a goddamn Superhero. To him, stories about a lone caped crusader against an army of mutants are slice of life, while stories about high school students falling in love for the first time seem weird and fantastical. He knows more about the world of heroes and villains than he does about the world of regular people.
His biggest pet peeve: Back in the early 80s, Elemental did an interview with the Ace City newspaper during which he revealed some of what he knew about his species. There was a typo, and so about a quarter of the world's population still calls the species "Carinians" instead of "Carinans".
