Tag: personality tests

The love languages of Star Wanderers

So I’ve been reading this really interesting book recently called The Five Love Languages. Maybe you’ve heard of it. The basic idea is that all expressions of human love and affection fall into five basic categories or languages, and that we’re all better at speaking or understanding one language than we are at the others. There’s actually an online test where you can figure out what your primary language is (mine is physical touch), and learn how to better speak the others.

As I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but think about the characters from my books, especially the Star Wanderers books. Just for fun, I decided to figure out what their primary love languages are. Just as a warning, there will be unmarked spoilers below.

Jeremiah

Jeremiah’s primary love language is definitely physical touch, and that’s probably why I was able to write him so well. For him (and for me), physical intimacy implies an emotional commitment, which is why at first he turns Noemi down (he doesn’t want to make a promise that he can’t keep). When they finally do get together, the language barrier isn’t so much of an issue for him because he gets all the love and affection he needs through physical touch.

Noemi

Noemi’s love language is quality time. For her, physical touch is more just a means to an end, which is why she’s okay with offering herself physically to Jeremiah before she really knows him. But at the various points in the series where it looks like he might leave her for a while, she freaks out a bit, even when she knows it’s only temporary. Because the Ariadne is so small, and she and Jeremiah are basically forced to live on top of each other, she’s able to bond very quickly with him because of all the time they spend together.

Mariya

Without a doubt, Mariya’s love language is acts of service. It’s not until Jeremiah saves her family by getting them a berth on the Hope of Oriana that she really starts to fall for him. She tries to express her love by offering to help translate between Jeremiah and Noemi, which has the added benefit of making them both dependent on her to some degree. When Lucca rescues her from the pirates, she starts to fall for him instead, which culminates after he helps her to save everyone else.

Lucca

I’m not sure what Lucca’s love language is exactly. I want to say it’s acts of service, because he also doesn’t really fall for Mariya until she saves him. At that point, she goes from being the pretty trophy he won in the contest with the pirates into an actual human being that he can love and respect. He also has a bit of quality time going on, since he really comes to love her after the time that they spend together.

Jakob

At first, I thought that Jakob’s love language would also be acts of service, because of how he slaves away to support his family and feels rebuffed when they don’t appreciate it. But then I remembered that his pride makes it hard for him to accept acts of service from others. After thinking about it some more, I think his primary love language is words of affirmation. Salome’s constant nagging really grates on him, and her harsh words nearly drive him to the brink of suicide. He’s too proud to admit that he needs to be told that he’s loved, but he really does.

Salome

Salome’s love language is almost certainly receiving gifts. When Jakob’s work at the Oriana Station dockyards take him away from her, she feels unloved because he isn’t giving her the gift of his presence. More importantly, when he sent both of their sons away on the Medea, she felt as if he had taken two of the most important things in her life away from her—the exact opposite of giving gifts. The fact that they’re so poor certainly doesn’t help things.

Just for fun, let’s do a few characters from Sons of the Starfarers as well!

Isaac

Isaac’s love language is probably physical touch. He feels like he has to be within an arm’s reach of Aaron at all times, which is one of the reasons that Aaron resents him. He’s also hyper-aware of Reva’s no nudity taboo, and is very careful not to touch her when she isn’t wearing any clothes. When she puts a hand on his shoulder, he has a minor breakdown, and when she gives him the henna tattoo, that’s also a big deal mainly because of how it involves physical touch.

Aaron

I’m pretty sure that Aaron’s love language is words of affirmation, though I haven’t fully thought it through yet. He misbehaves and acts irresponsible because of how Isaac constantly nags him, and when he’s surrounded by friends who give him verbal encouragement, he starts to shape up rather quickly.

Reva

I’m not sure what Reva’s love language is. It isn’t physical touch, and it isn’t words of affirmation—her father wasn’t very good with words, but she still knew that he loved her. It isn’t receiving gifts either, since she doesn’t think much of the clothes that Isaac buys for her. So just by process of elimination, her love language is probably either quality time or gifts of service. Of those two, I’m more inclined to say that quality time is the more important one, which should become obvious in Book V: Captives in Obscurity.

Mara

Mara’s love language is almost certainly words of affirmation. In the first chapter of Book IV: Friends in Command, she has a nightmare that should make that abundantly clear. She’s also closed herself off in a lot of ways, to the point where she’s no longer comfortable with giving or receiving any sort of affection. That’s why she can be so harsh when she’s criticizing Aaron—though, to be fair, she always strives to make her criticism constructive.

So there you have it! Six characters from Star Wanderers and four characters from Sons of the Starfarers, with all of their love languages worked out. For the characters I’m not so sure about, I should probably take the online test for them just to see how it ends up. That would be a fun project, but for now, I think my time would be better spent writing the next Sons of the Starfarers book.

Take care, and let me know what you think!

Trope Tuesday: Character Alignment

Alternate versions put 20th Century Fox in the Lawful Evil slot.

I love personality tests.  There’s something immensely satisfying about putting yourself on a grid that tells you something new and insightful about yourself and the people around you.  My personal favorite is the Meyers-Briggs test (I’m an ENTP), but I like playing around with others as well.

Character alignment is what you get when you combine fictional characters with the role they’re supposed to play in the story.  It’s a way to categorize the different ways they react to problems and ethical dilemmas, and to see which are inclined to be enemies and  which are inclined to be allies.

These systems initially arose out of RPG systems like Dungeons and Dragons, which use numbers, charts, and statistics to turn a story into a playable game.  There are many different kinds of alignments, but the most well-known is probably the one used by D&D, which charts characters along a good-evil axis and a lawful-chaotic axis.  In practice, the result looks a little like this:

Of course, that’s a very simplified version.  The tvtropes page goes into much greater depth, but I’ve personally found that this page right here does a much better job explaining the concepts behind the chart.

The horizontal axis, law vs. chaos, describes how much the character values order and authority vs. their own independence and freedom.  Lawful characters value honor and obedience, while chaotic characters value innovation and rebelliousness.  Characters who are neutral with regards to law and chaos generally respect authority, but put their own interests first and go against the established norms when that’s the best way to further their own ends.

The vertical axis, good vs. evil, describes how well (or poorly) characters tend to treat other people.  Good characters are altruistic and make sacrifices to protect the defenseless, whereas evil characters will kill, rob, or torture the innocent simply for the evulz.  Characters who are neutral with regards to good and evil don’t like to hurt others, but are not above pursuing questionable means to achieve their own goals.

Put together, the alignments create a 9-square chart, like the one at the top of the post.  While it’s certainly not obligatory to fill every slot, doing so can add a greater degree of depth to your story, as it certainly did with Firefly.

As with any formula, however, there is danger in holding too closely to the chart and becoming inflexible.  In real life, people switch alignments all the time, just as personalities can change and evolve (in high school, for example, I was an INTP).  Not only that, but some characters even fulfill all the possible roles, depending on the incarnation and the story.

Because I'm BATMAN!

The point is, character alignment is just a tool, not a hard-and-fast rule that needs to be used with every story.  If it’s a helpful way to think about your characters and set them up with interesting conflicts, great.  If not, don’t sweat it; Homer and Shakespeare were telling great stories long before this chart.

I’m going to be going overseas soon, so I expect my internet access is going to be spotty for the next couple of months.  Because of that, I’m going to write up a bunch of Trope Tuesday posts on each of the nine alignments and schedule them to post automatically.  So stay tuned for more!