HMD?

[signhere]

How's my driving? I am extremely nervous about picking up Light because up until this point I've played mostly moronic characters, so please please let me know any ways that I can improve, if he seems to lack something, if he's coming across too dumb or too bland or too cliche evil bad guy, anything!

Anon commenting SHOULD be enabled, but if I didn't hit the right setting definitely sock it to me and let me know.

Comments

[hawthorned]

Hi there! I haven't read your S_C material, so this isn't a comment about your playing or the voice you have for Light Yagami, but a crit based on your application.

Often it can be helpful to have an established medical diagnosis to have a framework to build characterization around, but I want to ask what lead you to decide that Light has antisocial personality disorder. You say that he exhibits all the signs of having it (I'm assuming you used DSM-IV criteria here) but I'd have to disagree.

Personality disorders are diagnosed based on pervasive, life long patterns of behavior. Antisocial PD is characterized by outward, physical violence, hence the requirement of evidence of having a known conduct disorder before age 15 in category C.

You even say it yourself in the app that Light doesn't have that background. "The prime example of what a Japanese model student, classmate, and son should be, an upstanding individual with great morals."

Additionally, we have the Yotsuba arc to account for. Light has moral preoccupations during that arc, and if this is what he would have been like without the influence of the Death Note, then to nail him with antisocial personality disorder seems even less fitting. I agree that Light does exhibit a great deal of apathy towards the rest of the world, but there is a huge difference between apathy and "violating the rights of others." That said, I do agree that once Light starts using the note he starts violating rights left and right, but to suggest that he does so because of a pervasive, inherently violent and amoral streak he has, to me seems odd.

I hope this doesn't discourage you, b/c as I've said this isn't a crit on the voice, or how you play him. I'm just uncomfortable with the conclusions you have drawn in your app. I don't know if you have a background in psychiatry, but I thought I'd point out to you that PD's aren't nearly as simple as fitting 3 descriptions in Category A.

P.S You've set this to log IP addresses, which I don't know if you've done intentionally or not!

[signhere]

Hello! Thank you for taking the time to write this. I really appreciate it! And lol, no. Logging IPs wasn't intentional at all! (I just fail at dreamwidth and LJ so I didn't realize.)

As for my application, you raise good points. I have no real argument for what I wrote because really it's one-part ignorance and one-part I suck at writing personality sections! From what I learned in psych 101 and what I pulled from media depictions and what I thought I knew about anti-social personality disorder -- I believed Light fit the bill. Not a great deal of research had gone into my 'diagnosis' so there was (and is -- as you pointed out!) a lot of room for error.

I do want to say that although what I've written may be inaccurate, I don't really use it to guide the voice of the character. Applications are very difficult for me to write and the personality sections, especially, are 90% bullshit/10% humor. If you give me a scenario, I can usually tell you how my character will react, his/her reasons for reacting that way -- but I have a really hard time giving an outsider/psychological analysis of WHY the character acted that way. The main form of RP I used to do didn't involve applications so it was simply character voice that pulled you through and I'd grown to rely on introspection, voice, character development to RP rather than some essay about why a character does what he/she does. Mainly, I don't view applications as a way to pick apart a character and see how they tick, rather they're this annoying thing I have to get through so I can SHOW you how they tick. I usually write them and never look back, especially the personality section, haha.

But I will keep these things you pointed out in mind if I ever decide to app him somewhere else in the future. And if you have anything else in regards to what can help me with his voice/what can help me play him better -- please let me know! This isn't discouraging at all. It's actually very encouraging that you took the time to write this comment out for me. Thank you! <3