Meme: Gaming Experience!

[bitten_notshy]

I was thinking about this meme for some reason, and I was surprised to notice it's been more than two years since we did it. I say it's time for an update. As Tracy wrote at the time:

This one's a little different! It's sort of the brainchild of some memes I've seen on RL LJ's and some original questions from our own brains. Don't be scared. Feel free to answer as many or as few as you'd like!

1. What characters do you play/have you played?
   
2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?
   
3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things?
   
4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not?
   
5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?
   
6. Do you plan things like ships and character development?
   
7. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences?
   
8. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played?
   
9. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon?
   
10. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH?
    
11. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else?
    
12. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers?
    
13. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)?
    
14. Do you consider yourself OCD?
    
15. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters?
    
16. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use?

Comments

[trickydemigod.livejournal.com]

What characters do you play/have you played? Currently: Luke Castellan, Wallace Wells and Chuck Bass. In the past? Draco Malfoy, Dick Casablancas, Buster Bluth, Prue Halliwell, Meg Manning, Alaric Saltzman, Dan Humphrey, Donut, Peter Griffin, Tim Riggins, Emmett Cullen, Lois Lane, Damon Salvatore, Harvey Dent, Leonard McCoy, Marshall Eriksen, Marion Ravenwood, Crow T. Robot and I am positive I'm missing someone else.

If you're curious, I miss Malfoy, Emmett and Marshall the most. I'm always tempted to app Malfoy and Emmett again but then I hold myself back.

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I've been playing at FH since day one and that was my first RP.

If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? Oh so many things. Namely the formatting.

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? I do now, mostly because I realize that I can only handle 1 to 2 students at a time but I used to app everybody and then somebody would get ignored.

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Probably Meg, because she was the first nice character I played after a long, long string of jerks. And, no, it didn't make me bleed. It was kind of relief to play someone everybody didn't hate. It's difficult forcing you people to like my jackasses sometimes.

Do you plan things like ships and character development? I used to go with the flow but, with Luke especially, things are planned because his canon is such a clusterfuck that I need to have it sorted out.
5a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? I think they both have their advantages, but even in planned ships sometimes things don't go the way you planned. And then in organic ones sometimes you look at the other person and are like HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? I think out of ships Dick and Veronica lasted the longest and out of friendships...probably Sam and Chuck.

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? YES AND YES. I'm fixing Luke's right now (oh especially that last scene. That last scene will be hacked to death because it makes me rage) and I saved Meg from her crap canon ending and I made Chuck less of an idiot because I don't know why Gossip Girl hates him.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? Probably Chuck and Sam's friendship.

What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I have a post that maps out Luke's plot development by book and it lists each post I have to make and then is color coded to show what I have done.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? No. Once I pick one it stays that way.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? Mix of both. I prefer someone else do the work but I'll make my own when I have to. I usually like to pick things from shows/movies than photoshoots and I haaaaaaaaaaaate text on my icons. Hate.

[endsthegame]

What characters do you play/have you played?

In this game? Jeff Murdock, Earthworm Jim, Sarah Kerrigan, Cable, Ray Kowalski, Arthur Pendragon, Denise Mahoney, Jak, Ender Wiggin, Peter Wiggin, Dolf Wega, John Mitchell, and so on, and so on...

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?

Four, maybe five years? I lose track a lot. But I've been RPing since I was about twelve years old, in all.

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not?

I try. And then five minutes later I go, 'ooooh, they could be interesting!' and completely ruin it. I really should, though - school's been wearing me out.

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?

I tend to start out being equally fine with all of my characters, but some start to wear off on me after a while. Jak was fine to play for a few months, but then quickly became like squeezing blood from a stone. Sigh. On the other hand, Ender's proven that even after a period like that, a character can pick up on me if they have the right motivation. A character like Mitchell comes and goes.

Do you plan things like ships and character development?

To a point. I tend to have some milestones set in my head about them - we'll do milestone Y when we've done/are in the middle of plot X. Otherwise, I just kind of go with it.

Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences?

All of my ships are kind of a mix, honestly. Generally it's something organic that sets them off, and then I plot and plan a little as I go along.

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played?

Thaaat honour goes to Cable/Deadpool with a big star. I don't play Cable that much these days, but they're still hanging in there.

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon?

I try to avoid it, honestly, but sometimes you can't help it. Arthur's canon has gotten so bloody stupid I really feel honourbound to fix it - but then his presence in Fandom already does that.

Mitchell started off as an 'OMG NO I LOVE HOW HIS CANON TURNED OUT' and then the third season happened.

Meanwhile, Ender is a source of great 'what should I do?' because I do kind of love how fucked up his future canon is, but at the same time I want to alter some of it. I still don't know how much of it I plan to change/fix.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH?

Turtle/Jeff. Forever. How they went from Turtle pretending to be a model on the radio (sarcastically) to dating for two years, I will never know.

How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else?

I'm incredibly disorganised, so I just kind of keep it in whatever browser I happened to have it in at the time. And occasionally click through from email links if I accidentally close a tab, etc.

Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers?

Ahaha. No. The only one I use alll the time is LJ login. And Lazarus, but I'm not using Firefox as much these days because Lazarus likes to fuck with it.

What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)?

AHAHAHA. Nothing. I am the LEAST ORGANISED PERSON EVER.

Do you consider yourself OCD?

SEE ABOVE. No, seriously. I am the least organised person in this game. I suck at anything OCD whatsoever. Which occasionally leads to awkward moments of '...let's pretend they haven't talked about this before' because I forget stuff.

I have a good memory for random details, though. NO SOCKS IN BATTLE SCHOOL.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters?

Sometimes I do, and sometimes it just feels like too much of a fuss. It depends on the mood I'm in.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use?

A little of option A, a little of option B. I just go with what looks nice, and if I don't find enough icons, or I find a nice picture I want an icon of, I make it myself. I don't get too fussed.

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? Oh god. I'm such a newbie. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Topher Brink, Miley Ray Stewart and Neal Caffrey.

2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I've been at FH just about fourteen months. The only other RPing I've done was some horribly embarrassing Harry Potter forums when I was maybe eleven.

3. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? Hasn't come up yet. Though I think having more than one teacher might be too much for me to handle during the school year.

4. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Neal is really hard for me lately because for some reason I have a tough time keeping up with his canon. With the others, I can go back and rewatch, no problem, but new content is harder for some reason. Probably because I can't justify playing spider solitaire while I watch.

5. Do you plan things like ships and character development? Yes. So much. Especially the two of my characters who I plan to send through canon, because I have whole spreadsheets outlining when and how they'll change as a result of X, Y, and Z.
5a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? Talk to me when I have more characters under my belt.

6. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? You guys, I am so not qualified to answer this.

7. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? I'm pretty comfortable with the canons of my current characters, but if I had someone else, I might feel differently.

8. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? You guys. TOPHER HAS FRIENDS. WHAT.

9. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? I mainly just keep the different tabs open and go through LJLogin like a pro. Which, actually, I didn't even have for the first, like, eight months I was in the game, because I hadn't heard of it and I used IE anyway. Believe me when I say I am SO glad I saw the light.

10. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? Just Login, but I'm pretty sure most of you guys have that already.

11. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I do keep a GCal, which is fairly new since I don't even have a calendar for my own personal life. And two of my kids have spreadsheets of their canon catchups and info and such, while the other two I'm less bothered with.
11a. Do you consider yourself OCD? Little bit.

12. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? So much.

13. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? I go through HollowArt and IJ every so often. The one time I made icons (for Topher, actually) was a disaster, so I'm not trying that again.

[geewhizfellas.livejournal.com]

What characters do you play/have you played? *deep breath*

Setsuna Sakurazaki, Tabitha-Ruth Wexler, Yasutora "Chad" Sado, Rosette Christopher, Chrono, Adah Price, Rachel Price, Kenpachi Zaraki (and Yachiru!), Charlotte York-Cooper, Minsc (and Boo!), Shunsui Kyōraku, Valentine Wiggin, Cal Stephanides, Ariel, Alexander of Daventry, Rosella of Daventry, Charlie Swan, Daisy Day, Angua von Uberwald, Butters Stotch, Kūkaku Shiba, Jane Porter, A.J., Hubert J. Farnsworth, Jasper Hale, aaaaaaaand I think that's it?

I tried to do it in order, and gave up. XD

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I'm going into my sixth year at FH, I think, but I've been roleplaying online ever since I was eleven, which meant I was super awesome back then. Oh yeah.

If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? I haven't been here since the beginning, but that doesn't mean there's no repression. ;)

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? I didn't used to, but now I limit myself in numbers, just because I can't quite play 'em as much as I used to.

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Valentine Wiggin! I loved playing her, but I was such a spaz about playing her to my canon mate's exceptions. She says I do well, though, but that doesn't make the spazzing cease, omg.

Do you plan things like ships and character development? I'm all about the organic, baby. And not just because I suck at OOC planning.

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Teddy and Chad! In our heads, they're still dating and being awesome in spaaaaaace!

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? I haven't, just because if there's something in canon that needs fixing, I'd rather not app from it. I like to stay as true as I can.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? I'd have to say a lot of my previous ships. They were all so organic and unexpected. Teddy/Chad? Turtle/Jeff? LEE/ADAH??? They're amazing and I love them all.

How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? I....don't really do anything special; I just go by my email notifs, and there you have it. I basically have one tab for the friendslist, which I update frequently, and then one open with my gmail.

Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? I can't live without lj-login, but I'm pretty sure that goes for everyone.

(meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? Most. Disorganized. Person. Ever. I do have a notebook filled with canon quotes and notes for current and potential characters, if that counts?

Do you consider yourself OCD? Yes, but not much gamewise.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? I like it to look pretty, but I'm usually too lazy.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? I'm an obsessive icon hunter, but some of my canons (ahem, Alexander. Rosella....) I have to make my own for lack of any other existing!

[trigons_child]

1. What characters do you play/have you played?

Raven, Angelica Jones, Leia Organa, Jessica Hamby, Vida Boheme, Belthazor, Wyatt Halliwell, Ellie Arroway, Drake Demon, and others I'm forgetting.


2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?

RPing in general? Longer than some of you have been alive, you bloody whippersnappers. Like...1982 or something. RPing on LJ? My Cole journal for the Sunnydale Socks says it was created January 14, 2003, so for over 8 years. I've been with FH since day one.


3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things?

YES. OH GODS YES. *whimper* But on the other hand, I am also cruel and on occasion link people to things from those days to hurt their brains. ;)


4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not?

Not consciously, no.


5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?

Leia, I'd say. She terrifies me. I don't give her half the attention I should because I am so scared of doing her wrong. Raven does cause me some bleed from time to time.


6. Do you plan things like ships and character development?

I started Bel knowing he'd hook up with Phoebe eventually, but the rest of my characters have had their relationships develop in game. With character development, it's a combination of both. I'll have some canon things planned, but a lot of it is based on interaction with other characters.


6a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences?

I guess the only difference for me is the working toward it. Mylia and I planned for Bel and Phoebe, though Anders was unexpected (but happy and fun, of course). So it's more conscious effort to establish the relationship. Wyatt/Isabel was completely unplanned and actually came about while Izzy was trying to hook Wyatt up with someone else.

Leia I didn't plan on anything other than a few flings because she'd be going off to canon and her scoundrel (even if she thinks she hates him now). Raven had a thing for Jono waaaaaaaaaaay back, but that wasn't planned at all. Angelica I'd like to see hook up with someone but I'm just letting it happen naturally.


7. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played?

Bel/Phoebe is definitely the longest ship since they were here from the beginning.


8. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon?

Oh, HELL yes. I fixed Charmed all the time because it still makes me ragey. If you ever want to wind me up and watch me froth, just ask me my feelings on Charmed season 5. I also fixed a bit of Teen Titans because redundant canon was redundant (with Raven dying after succumbing to her father, being brought back and enslaved by Brother Blood and rescued, dying again, coming back evil, dying again, being brought back and enslaved by Brother Blood (son of the original) and rescued), so I skipped a good chunk of the middle there. I may still hit some of the plot points I skipped but not the Titans Hunt arc because, again, ask me about it and watch me froth.


9. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH?

Probably Anders. ;) Bel started hitting on him while he was possessed by the Source, and then he and Phoebe turned to each other when Bel was dead, and when Bel came back (shut up, I do not have a type) all three of them ended up together.


10. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else?

I've got LJLogin so I usually open multiple tabs and rename them to try to keep track of what's going on. Sadly, sometimes I fail because I have serious attention issues and then I feel too stupid to ping back when it's a day later. :-/


11. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers?

Remember the Milk, LJLogin, LJ Addons (mostly for ability to expand threads when you aren't paid and track threads when LJ's being stupid about comment notifications), Tab Mix Plus, Lazarus Form Recovery.

[trigons_child]

Holy crap apparently I talk too much:

12. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)?

I use the Remember the Milk GMail add-on and put classes and posting work and such into it. I'd be lost without it. I also have the FH GCal calender hooked in to my Google Desktop so I can see dates there.


13. Do you consider yourself OCD?

No, I consider myself CDO, with the letters in alphabetical orders AS THEY SHOULD BE. Ahem. So, yes.


14. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters?

On occasion when I'm bored.


15. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use?

A little of both. I like to play with icons but I'm not all that great with photoshop, so I go a-hunting for what others have done. This doesn't work when it comes to characters that aren't as popular, though, so I have to fall back on my own. Same with having to photoshop Raven's chakra on every icon I have for her, though the bases may come from elsewhere.

[ancientbschamp.livejournal.com]

Sure, give me a meme where I can ramble. You do realize this is a bad idea, right?

What characters do you play/have you played?
Let's go from the beginning, shall we? *TAKES A DEEP BREATH*

Former characters: Archie Kennedy (actingltcrumpet), Conner McKnight (connernotconnor), Zordon (overlord_zordon), Janice Covington (drjcovington), Sakura Nishihori (blossomsofice), Anne Shirley (ladycfitzgerald), Yitzhak (queen_of_zagreb), Sara Stanley (isntabitpretty)

Current characters: Samuel T. Anders (cantgetnorelief), Jen Scotts (time_flyer_5, Katina Choovanski (thismaskiwear), Lacey Burrows (laceycantlie), Tahiri Veila (weetuskenraider), Kennedy (brat_intraining), Gabrielle (ancientbschamp), Stephanie Brown (batwaffles)

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?
Since the beginning, bb. Six freakin' years now. But if we count things like D&D and CCGs and MUDs and everything, about seventeen years.

If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things?
LA LA LA LA LA I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN WHY WOULD I HAVE TO REPRESS LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not?
I do now, yes. For a long time I was very "PLAY ALL THE CHARACTERS!!!!1!111!" but I just don't have the energy or the attention span to do that any more, so I think the mix I've got more or less works out for me now (not counting alum/ex-pat characters, two students and maybe one townie/teacher).

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?
Depends on what you mean by "tough." Yitzhak was very tough for a long time because he didn't speak, and I envy people who have done so much better with the nonverbal characters than I did. Tahiri was tough for a good stretch of time there because of the split-personalities issue, because I was always afraid of going overboard with it and while it didn't cause me bleed, it did cause me a whole lot of anxiety. Anne and Sara were tough for similar (read: being L.M. Montgomery protagonists) reasons: they are so talkative, but have a period-specific sort of voice that I always worried about getting wrong to the point where I was afraid to play them much because I was sure I would. Sara in particular also had the problem of being one of those characters whose personality turns out not playing out in an interactive setting as well as it does in the book; canonically when she talks, you listen, and everyone's enchanted by her speaking voice, which obviously was not something I was going to force in an RP setting so it was hard to play her accurately.

Overall, though, Katchoo has always been my toughest character because of the fact that yes, just getting into her head to write her causes me a hell of a lot of bleed.

Do you plan things like ships and character development?
For ships, depends on the character; I think the only one I have ever actually planned was Katchoo and Francine. Other than that the extent of planning has basically been along the lines of "hey, they work well off each other, want to see if that goes anywhere?"

For character development, that also depends on the character. Some of my characters have roughly planned arcs (Katchoo, Tahiri, Gabrielle); some of them I'm just flying by the seat of my pants (Steph, Jen); Kennedy's the only one I've actually planned out in ridiculous amounts of detail but then again she's my favorite so I don't think it's a surprise to anyone, but even then those plans have evolved a lot because of things that happened in Fandom that I couldn't anticipate.

5a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences?
Again, I've only ever actively planned the one, so I don't know that I can say I prefer one over the other but I will say that there's a certain element of pleasant surprise in the unplanned ones when they turn out to work out really well.

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played?
Hands-down, Anders and Bridge's friendship. That goes back to about the first week of my being in this game!

[ancientbschamp.livejournal.com]

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon?
Yes and no. When it comes to huge canon events where crappy things happened to characters and everybody was unhappy about it, I'm not really inclined to change those things because frequently the aftermath is where things really get interesting. (Does that stop me from bitching? Well, no.) What I do tend to want to fix is the circumstances -- so they make sense, or don't play out in really problematic ways. Possibly the biggest exception to this is Stephanie coming to Fandom instead of getting fired as Robin and then setting off a chain of events that led to a citywide gang war and an absolutely I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it horrific death for her. (Which was later retconned, but details. It was another women-in-refrigerators situation that I had a huge problem with.)

So yeah, I guess I do believe in . . . well, tuning up canon, I guess. Which -- stay tuned (heh) for some of that.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH?
Tahiri being as close to whole as she is at this point. I absolutely did not see that coming; I figured she'd be better than she was when she arrived, but never expected the relationships she formed to have so much of a positive effect on her.

How do you deal with many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else?
Ahahaha. The answer to that is I don't. I can't really handle it any more, but as far as I do manage, well, it's a justification for my compulsive browser-collecting habit.

Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers?
Lazarus Form Recovery is about the most life-saving thing ever.

What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)?
GCal reminders linked everywhere and synced to my phone, with email reminders. (Although I still have Katchoo's work and class schedules beeping at me on my phone every week, and I really need to do something about that . . .)

Do you consider yourself OCD?
In many, many ways, a resounding yes.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters?
Only when I get the random wild notion to do it. Otherwise I'm incredibly lazy about that sort of thing.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use?
I am a terrible icon-maker, and only end up making my own when I can't find any. (Or when certain RP partners don't dump a ton of them in my lap, COUGH COUGH thatsamilkshake.) So usually I don't end up having enough choices to have to narrow 'em down . . .

[withasword.livejournal.com]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? Currently: Kate Daniels, Chuck Bartowski, Effy Stonem and Angela Montenegro. Previously: Cindy Mackenzie, Shawn Farrell, Aiden Burn (who I always forget)... and I think that's it!

2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? Five and a half years here at FH and in total. Y'all were my first.

3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? I've been at FH since the second semester and still the answer is a HELL YES. Wow.

4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? Yes, because even with my limited numbers there's always, always one who gets neglected... Usually Chuck, the poor little nerd.

5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Effy... and I don't know about bleed, but she did (and still does) make my brain hurt trying to figure her out.

6. Do you plan things like ships and character development? Nah. I don't think I've planned a relationship ever.

6a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? Organic, definitely. I like me some spontaneity.

7. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? I guess would have to be Angela and Hannibal. Three years there, and... yeah, idek what they are, but they're still something.

8. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? YYYYY. Many of you had to put up with my keysmashery over some of Effy's canon. I took out certain particularly triggery aspects and fixed it so she's not a complete basket case. Fixing ftw!

9. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? See above re. Skins and Effy's surprise mental breakdown and subsequent suicide attempts. AKJDK SKINS.

10. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? I use Firefox and tabs for most things. Back when I had more than two active characters multiple browsers were run. Usually only for Prom and Homecoming, though.

11. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? With the amount of times I've had to reinstall FF I am WAY too lazy to keep track of a million add-ons. It's pretty much LJ login and that's it for me.

12. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? GCal organises my many lives. I would forget every birthday/anniversary/party/my head without it.

12. Do you consider yourself OCD? In certain things? But see above re. completely forgetful, never plans anything ahead of time, etc...

13. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? I always do it when I app a character, usually in the couple of weeks between submitting and actually getting accepted... and then never touch it again!

14. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? Mostly the icon hunting, but if there's something specific I need, I'll pull out Photoshop and make it.

[olympian-herc.livejournal.com]

What characters do you play/have you played? Oh golly, deep breath. Elphaba Thropp, Freddie Benson, Hercules, Captain Hook, Peter Bishop, Hugo 'Hurley' Reyes, Cally Tyrol/'Veruca Cally', Hayley Fitzpatrick, Captain Price, Mina Harker/Murray, Fred Dukes, Jennifer Walters (She-Hulk), The Doctor (9th), Ashley Williams (the dude from Evil Dead, not the badass from Mass Effect), Cassie Lang, Tom Servo, Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar, Agent Smith, Dewey Finn, Quark, Vince Noir, Joxer, Dr. Venture. Also, for the span of less than a week, Eugene Dinsmore.

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? At FH, I was here since about the third week or so, with a large chunk out of the middle taken out when I went off the reservation due to me being a total jerk and generally being full of myself, really. RPing in general? I was in elementary when my brother brought home First Quest (http://www.trollandtoad.com/p133179.html) and made me be his guinea pig player.

If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? I try not to repress things, so I can continue to learn from previous mistakes of mine.

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? Oh, absolutely. I try to actually limit myself on how much time I RP, in fact. I have an addictive/obsessive personality, and I have to be careful about that sort of thing. Right now, with going to grad school, 4 is the absolute limit of active characters for me, and even then I always worry I am neglecting one or the other.

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Hayley was the toughest to play, by far. I had to be careful to keep her Hayley and not turn her into Harleen, if that makes sense. As far as bleed, well, I've finally kicked the habit of 'characters whose issues are closely related to mine'. With the exception of Elphie. But back when I was playing Hurley, oh man, yeah, a lot of bleed.

Do you plan things like ships and character development? I don't plan a whole lot, other than canon events. My one dabbling in original was awesome, though (LXG vs The Triffids)
5a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? I've never 'planned' a ship, so... who knows!
Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? I think this falls into Callynanders. The greatest 'ship I ever ruined due to personal impulsiveness, which continues to be one hell of a regret, even years later.

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? I haven't 'fixed' a canon yet, really. This will change when Elphaba graduates, though. I suppose there's an argument for Thrillkiller, but that was more going off on a totally crazy tangent.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? Seriously, my real life has been influenced by FH in so many ways, it's amazing. Romance, heartbreak, amazing opportunities, great friendships... that's what surprised me, the most.

How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? I avoid threading with more than one character like the plaaaaaague. :D

Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? LJ Login is a must, of course.

What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I am a severely disorganized person, who makes up for it by being able to improvise, really.

12. Do you consider yourself OCD? I definitely am too messy of a person to be OCD.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? I do! Just cause I like playing with graphics, really.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? I'm mainly a make-my-own kind of guy. Though half the time this is because now I'm playing not-so-popular-to-icon characters.

[solo_sword]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? So, so many. Aeryn Sun, Jaye Tyler, Quinn Morgendorffer, Joel Robinson, Hermione Granger, Captain Liberty, Jaina Solo, Ka D'Argo, Lily Aldrin, Cher Horowitz, Juno Eclipse, Dana Whitaker, Esme Weatherwax, Brooke Davis, Buffy Summers, Adrian Ivashkov, Mirax Terrik, Angela Martin, Kitty Pryde, Jane Lane, Annie Edison, Susan Sto Helit... Now I think that's all of them.
2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? Six years to both!
3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? Oh holy god yes. I sometimes go back into Hermione's journal to check things and cringe at the use of present tense.
4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? Depends on what I have going on. I didn't used to, but when things blew up for me I went down to just Jaina because I knew I could handle that, and now that things are better I'm slowly adding characters again. I doubt I'll ever hit the limit of active characters again, though.
5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Esme was by far the hardest, because I was so convinced I was coming off as a bitch rather than my character. I've only ever gotten bleed from Aeryn and Jaina, though, but not anymore apparently.
6. Do you plan things like ships and character development? Ships, not really. Pretty much it goes badly when I try. Character development, though, yes. I tend to know what's coming up for my kids, so I keep that in mind and sort of play towards it and it all tends to work out.
6a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? Organic ships work out for me? Idk.
7. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? I failed at Aeryn towards the end, but definitely John and Aeryn.
8. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? I believe in fixing canon as long as it makes sense. And I can't say I've ever fixed canon as much as I've fixed details that would make the canon make sense in context.
9. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? Hmmm. There are a lot of things I could put here, but I still say if you look at the people Jaina associates with in Fandom, I have no idea how like 85% of those happened. Aeryn was the same way.
10. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? Lately this isn't too big an issue, but it definitely comes up for the welcome picnic. Then I just color code the hell out of my tabs.
11. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? I have no idea. You guys are where I get all the add-ons. :D
12. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I've got a huge file for Jaina's stuff, because I'm trying to keep track of everything for when I get to LOTF, and also half of that's written up in another Gdoc because my computers keep exploding and I refuse to lose all that work. Susan'll probably get something like this, too.
13. Do you consider yourself OCD? To a degree. I may not always write it all out, but I have to work everything out in my head or I can't handle it.
14. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? Yes, but I'm not great at it, so it's a lot of trial and error. And I have been known to make Tracy fix it all.
15. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? I'm not awesome at iconmaking, so I do have some of my own, but mostly I go icon hunting every few weeks.

[hurtingzeebo]

I'm totally going to make myself late for work with this.

What characters do you play/have you played? Currently: Claudia Donovan, Sam Puckett, Vincent, and Pinkie Pie, with Priestly and Castiel as alumnus and expat, respectively. In the past, in this game: Nadia Santos, Artie the Strongest Man in the World, Lucas, Daisy Adair, Pete Hutter, Steerpike, Warren Cheswick, Maddie and Syvvie, Lola, Coyote, and any number of guests and NPCs.

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? Since January 2006, though I took, like, a two year break in there, somewhere. RP in general? Since I was a kid.

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? I try to -- and sometimes fail. How the hell did I end up with four active characters? And why do I keep wanting to app a fifth?

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Hmmm. They've all had their own difficulties, really. None of them really made me bleed, but Nadia made my cry on a regular basis. Lola ended up sort of boring, unfortunately, and Artie and Coyote were kind of super hard to keep up with.

Do you plan things like ships and character development? Hahahahahaha not really no. I used to plan, like, epic plots and things, but it's been awhile. Mostly, I just go with the flow.

Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? I'm an organic sort. In part because the planned ones (in another game) blew up in my face speeeeeeeeeeeeectacularly. Organic ones tend to be way more low key, for me.

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Walter/Nadia, I think. All told, from UST to wandering out of the game without actually breaking up, yet, I think they made it through, like, two years.

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? I always think I do, but then I gleefully go for the fall through the glass coffee table after all.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? So, I had no idea that Nadia even had a crush on Walter until the first Once More With Fandom plot. And Priestly and Dinah's epic future love affair? Well. Let's just say anything particularly shippy tends to take me a bit by surprise.

How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? I embrace the chaos! Honestly, I haven't done this in awhile, but there was a time when I dealt with three characters simultaneously in a BDE while eating dinner, babbling in chat, and watching Veronica Mars. I have no effing clue how I managed that one.

Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? LJ login or the equivalent for your browser. I can take or leave any others, but holy crap, a journal juggler is essential (and I don't have it at work, le sigh)

What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I have a schedule of my students' classes in their profiles, which I refer to frequently. And Pinkie's class had a syllabus, which was very helpful. Other than that? I mostly wing it.

12. Do you consider yourself OCD? No more than the majority of society, which would mean it's not considered disordered, so, no. Not at all.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? I used to change Nadia's layout, like, once a month. I don't really do that any more, though I still love making banners in non-RP journals. I do delight in making icons, and have far more than are uploaded for pretty much all of my characters.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? Both! If I can find a good source for screencaps (or can cap my own), I make my own, but if I stumble upon one I like, or am working a genderswap, or just starting a character or or or I use ones other people have made. As for which icons I use, I try for a range of emotion, first, then just go with which ones make me happy for whatever reason.

[therewaslife]

What characters do you play/have you played?

I'm sure I'll forget some people but let's give it a try: John Crichton, Cedric Diggory, Gavin Darklighter, Ray Kowalski, Jonas, Benton Fraser, Hannibal King, Alex Karev, Dolores Umbridge, Lee Adama, Nobody Owens, Percy Jackson, and Nathan Young

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?

I've been at FH since it started but I was doing things like Heroes Unlimited before that. So, I've been RPing a good long while, let's just say that.

If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things?

Hahaha, yes. Who doesn't? The asterisk formatting and the present tense I was SO ATTACHED TO for the longest time. Now, I couldn't imagine myself using it.

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not?

Not really. I'm pretty good at handling character loads so if I find a character that grabs me and makes me wanna app, I do it as long as I have the character space. But, I only tend to app if the character really, really grabs me and won't let go.

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?

Oddly enough, it was Umbridge. But, she was also the most fun I've had too. She was just so so so mean and evil and she had so much evil to spread that her voice would sometimes strain. But, some of those threads back during Umbridge's reign are still my favorites ever. She was truly an interesting character to play and I'd definitely do it again. Hey, maybe I will, in fact!

Do you plan things like ships and character development?

Character development I definitely plan in terms of canon stuff but relationships are totally organic for me. I really adopt the 'wait and see' policy to see how my plans mesh with the CR I get in regards to each character.

Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences?

I've never really planned a ship so I wouldn't really know. I don't think there'd be huge differences if both players are on board with making the ship work.

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? John & Aeryn, definitely. AERYN STILL LIVES ON IN NPCLAND. Hannibal & Angela are a close second and I think Fraser & Robin might be right up there too. I really stick with ships, it seems.

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon?

If a canon needs to be fixed, I totally believe in it. I haven't really done it yet because my canon's have all been fairly nice but depending on what Misfits does with Nathan in the webisodes, that might change. Really, I got off easy because a lot of my characters are post canon and survived.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH?

Uh, that's a tough one. Alex & Effy getting all lovey was something I didn't expect considering how their relationship started. Kate & Bod turning into something serious was another one that sneaked up on me since they're so completely different.

How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else?

I don't use multiple browsers but I group character threads together and rename them MY CHARACTER/OTHER CHARACTER so I know whose talking with who and I can easily get to the tab.

[therewaslife]

Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers?

I swear by LJLogin (of course), TabRenamizer, Colorful Tabs, and LJ New Comments. TabRenamizer I especially recommend for big big threads where you have multiple characters in a post and don't want to get confused.

What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)?

I use GCal and 30Boxes (another calendar) to send me reminders of what classes I have when and for what character. If I don't do that, I'll forget to sign in. I use GDocs for plots and the like.

12. Do you consider yourself OCD?

Somewhat. I definitely keep myself organized so I don't forget things but I know people who are much more organized than me.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters?

Yes and yes. I'm pretty good at figuring out coding for layouts and userinfos and really like messing around with them when it comes to characters. I tend to change layouts and userinfos often because of this.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use?

OTHER PEOPLE. While I can manage layouts and userinfos, I suck at icons so I icon search a lot and I check the icons of other RP characters to try and snurch icons that way too. Anything I can do to not make my own icons, I will.

Oh and I tend to look for plain icons, mostly. I don't want text on RP icons and I usually go for longer shots instead of RIGHT CLOSE UP. I like clear, sharp icons and tend to lean towards photoshoots and the like.

[wwiii]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? Oh man. Uhm. Macbeth, Valentine, James (of Team Rocket), Lumiere, Michelangelo, Blackheart, Warren Peace, Nathan Algren, Reno, Tybalt Capulet, Zack Fair, Jonothon Starsmore, Jim Hawkins, Warren Worthington III. If I'm forgetting one, oops?
2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? Since one semester after forever.
3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? Nearly the beginning! I still repress! (Bifurcated still gives me heebie-jeebies.)
4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? I try. I think I'm getting the hang of it, especially this semester, where I'm retiring Reno and putting Jim on hiatus. There's way too much going over here in the land of manic animation to be able to keep up with much more than that.
5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Ever? That would probably be Tybalt. He didn't cause me bleed, but that's mostly because his voice was so difficult to get into.
6.Do you plan things like ships and character development? Sometimes? It depends on what I want to see happen. Usually I'm fairly easygoing, but things like canon catchup plots kind of encompass a big chunk of character development anyhow.
6a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? Either or! Reno and Rikku were planned. Pretty much every other ship I've had has been organic. They both have their benefits, I've found.
7. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Reno and Rikku, hands-down.
8. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? Um omg yes. FFVII was so broken in the first place, thanks to bad translations and heaps of retconning, that it needed some tweaks for a lot of things to even start to make sense.
9. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? Probably how much I've finally gotten a feel for Warren's voice. This time last year, I was flailing and thinking about pulling him.
10. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? Notifs and LJ Juggler on Chrome. Lots of open tabs and a fondness for refreshing. :D
11. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? Not offhand!
12. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? Mostly I just have a notepad document on my desktop with my students' class schedules on it. Other than that, I keep plot e-mails starred in my inbox, and if I need character timelines for canon, that's what GDocs is for.
13. Do you consider yourself OCD? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Ahem. Only when BDE organizing.
14. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? You know, I should? But I do so much image editing and making things look pretty for school, lately I couldn't be bothered.
15. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? Considering how hard it is to find icons for some of my characters, I would love to be able to find them online, but I usually end up making my own. Probably about 95% of Jono's were made by me. Most of Jim's were, too, and a healthy chunk of Warren's, because most of the Ben Foster stuff out there has him looking like a scummy hobo.

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

1. What characters do you play/have you played?

Let's see... Miss Parker, Susan Pevensie, Evie Carnahan, Charlie McGee, Dinah Lance, Sophie Devereaux, Dana Scully, and Kenzi here at FH.

Buffy Summers, Kate Lockley, Sylar, Geoffrey Tennant, Mike Celluci and Nikita in other games. (Sunnydale Socks, Dizzyworld, 4th Wall and Millways)

2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?

Six years (since the beginning) and only about six months longer than that, at Sunnydale Socks briefly.

3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things?

God yes, are you kidding? Both my own mistakes, and various horrors perpetrated by those now no longer in-game.

4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not?

I limit myself to (at most) two student characters here at time, since that's the most demanding type; and to about 3-4 total between this game and anywhere else. I'm just no good at concentrating or keeping up with the play, beyond that.

5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?

Parker. I think because it was the first time I played as intensely as FH demanded back then, because I loved her soooo much as a character, and because I wanted her storylines to be fixed so badly. I've had bleed from Dinah from time to time, during rough plots, but Parker was the absolute worst. I'm very glad she's an alumni now.

And yet more!

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

6. Do you plan things like ships and character development?

Hmmm, 50/50? 30/70? Yes/no? The character development, in general, I go in with ideas, usually 2-3 choices that I want to see how they'll develop in the cooking pot of RP. I've rarely planned 'ships out from the beginning; Jak/Dinah was the exception there, since we were hopeful they'd hit it off, and we knew Jak would be going through canon within a year, so it couldn't last forever. Everything else, no, I like seeing how characters spark with others without any preconceptions about how they'll get along.

6a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences?
Again, not the right person to ask... Parker/Jarod was practically canon, and can't really said to be 'planned' for that, especially for as many convolutions as it went through before it's reached the ex-pat resolved status it has now. Jak/Dinah still might not have happened at all, but it turned out they *did* have fun chemistry, so it developed amusingly, on no particular time-table. The differences, I think, have a lot to do with which characters are post-canon, mid-canon, or dealing with other parts of their canon. It tends to influence their development more strongly in both ships and friendships, if you have to incorporate ongoing developments, I think.

7. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played?

Ha! Parker & Zero. BFFs since September 2005. Still going to bunny Olympics and having weird phone conversations six years later. Isabel got here in Jan. 2006, but nearly as long there too. Plus still friends with Xander, Bridge, and Angel.

8. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon?

Hell yes. Pretender canon isn't just stupid, it's insane and contradicts itself. It had to be fixed in order to have any linear coherency. Not to mention resolved. Birds of Prey canon didn't need to be fixed so much as fleshed out, mostly with comics canon-- they left out a lot of things, and 13 eps isn't long enough to get all the answers you need to have a complete history for a character. Oh, and I sent my Susan back to a Narnia -- she was grown-up, it was time, and the ending of Last Battle sucked for her. (imo)

On the other hand, I didn't fix The Mummy, Firestarter, or Leverage, and I'm going to try to stick close to Lost Girl as son as we have more material next month. I'm not fixing Nikita over at Milliways, either. Pretty much, if the plots make sense, I try to leave them alone.... but there's always the temptation to drive off-road and see where it goes.

9. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH?

Parker's friendships; she's not a friendly person, but in order to play her, she had to be softened. I blame Zero. She didn't take Parker seriously at all, so all the growling threats kind of had to be given up in favor of exasperation. And she gave her a bunny!! That turned into friendships with Anders, Xander, Bridge, Angel, then Isabel... She would have been un-playable, otherwise. At least for me, it's hard to sustain that level of hostility without break.

There've been various other surprises at other times... Right now, I'm always cackling at how unrepentant and self-interested Kenzi is, and how that makes everything different from what I'm used to. Why should she apologize when she's not sorry? Why should she pretend she's doing something nice just for the sake of niceness? She's actually a pretty good person, but firmly knows you gotta look out for yourself before anyone else. Bizarre mind-shift for me. Parker had enough already to feel like she could and should protect other people first (the closest of my other characters in terms of ruthlessness). Kenzi inverts that.

10. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else?

Firefox tabs and yeah, Chrome, sometimes. Big parties and Homecoming are hell. I tend to space them out a little too. Otherwise you can get some really fun emotional whiplash between different mind-sets.

[momslilassassin]

1.What characters do you play/have you played? Let's see if I can remember them all:

Current: Anakin Skywalker (Star Wars), Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean), Eric Northman (True Blood), Ben Skywalker (Star Wars), Rilla Blythe (Rilla of Ingleside), Mat Cauthon (Wheel of Time), and Luke Skywalker (Star Wars).

Former: Barbossa (Pirates of the Caribbean), Josh Lyman (West Wing), Johnny Fever (WKRP in Cincinnati), Levi who was known as Biff (Lamb), Sirius Black (Harry Potter), Claudia Kishi (The Babysitter's Club).

2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I've been at FH since the beginning, my first and only RP experience.

3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? OH GOD YES. THERE WAS NO HAN. Also, I never wrote in first person. *Jedi mindtricks*

4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? I never play more than two students at a time, just because I want to make sure I can give them the attention they deserve.

5.Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? For different reasons, Luke and Claudia caused me problems: Luke because he's SO iconic and I'm not sure I ever really captured his voice correctly, and Claudia because playing a loveable ditz was exhausting, as was describing her outfits each time she was anywhere.

6. Do you plan things like ships and character development? Generally speaking, no. Three quarters of the fun of the game is bouncing characters off of others and seeing what happens. For students especially, I like pulling them mid-canon, seeing what changes by putting them in Fandom, and then sending them back.
6a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? With the exception of Sirius/Remus, which we'd kind of had in the back our minds when they arrived, all of my ships have been organic and soooo much fun. Barbossa/Miho Forever :D

7. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Rory and Anakin were friends from the first zombie invasion, so that's going on six years now. Good lord.

8. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? *cough* Well, Anakin's still alive, so...I like tweaking canon. Ben is never, for instance, going to sleep with a Sith.

9.Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? Can I say Anakin's arc in general? He's actually had growth! Who would have thought? (Shh, Bel.)

10. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? Oh, god, it's ridiculous. Each character gets a color and I swap tabs (Faviconize is a liiiifesaver for when your RP partner has gone AFK/to sleep. You can squish the tab small and not lose it) with LJ login.

11. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? No new add-ons, but a huuuuuuge shout out to Noah for his preplay coder.

12. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I couldn't live without my GCal reminders.

13. Do you consider yourself OCD? A little bit.

14. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? Layouts moreso than userinfo graphics, but my normal go-to of mintyapple has been coming up short for me in the last few months. I'm looking for suggestions :)

15. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? I used to make my own, but when my last laptop went toes up, it took Photoshop with it :(. I tend to look for interesting facial expressions (those who have them, HAYDEN), unique (without being insane) cropping, and pretty colors.

[demonbelthazor]

Growth? Could've fooled me.

[longislandiceme]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? Former: Carmela Rodriguez, Xander Bly, Wes Collins, Tommy Oliver. Currently: Bridge Carson, Bobby Drake, Jake Doyle, William Murdoch, Toby Logan... and okay, yeah, for the like TWO PEOPLE who may not have known: I'm totally Firekeeper too.
2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I HAVE BEEN HERE LONGER THAN ANYONE ELSE... by a few minutes, but still. Prior to FH, though, my RP experience was a silly self-insert Stargate RP played via IRC.
3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? Sometimes I go back and laugh at how ~clever~ I thought I was.
4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? I used to think I could only handle one active character. Now I'm almost maxed out. How the hell did that happen?
5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Probably Wes, just because he never really clicked in the Fandom environment.
6. Do you plan things like ships and character development? Ships, not exactly. I tend to throw my characters at people and sometimes they just click, often unexpectedly, and sometimes that leads to me approaching the other player/being approached with "hey, so my character has sort of developed this crush on yours..." or "wtf how did THESE TWO end up such good friends?" and THEN specific things start being planned. And then sometimes we make plans like having a 'ship where the characters have an amicable breakup at the end of the school year... and they get married instead. So. There's that. Character arcs... depends on the character. With the students that are way pre-canon, I mostly just look at what Fandom's got to offer as far as giving them skills/experience that they have as adults. William, for example, worked out really well in this respect because his canon's chock full of anachronistic inventions he's come up with... plus meeting Sherlock and John early in his Fandom experience got him bitten by the detective bug. And then there's Bobby, who's canon catchups have happened more or less on the fly, but always with the intent of getting him to a specific point that will be kicking off in the next week or so.
6a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? Hard to say since I consider most of mine a mix of both... but I like how the organic ones can surprise you, and then on the flip side, there's that feeling of accomplishment when a planned 'ship does what it's supposed to do.
7. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Friendship? Bridge and Anders, definitely. Relationship? Bridge and Xander.
8. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? Well, multiplez and I replaced our least-favourite fake teammate with an OC, so... yes?
9. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? The fact that Bobby had a relationship that actually lasted. I think it helps that Sookie is not crazy and/or actively trying to kill him and/or a gender-switching sentient nebula.
10. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? Multiple browsers! I also try and limit myself to two or three characters in the same post. It's rare that I'll throw all of them in somewhere.
11. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? Heh. Nothing that anyone else hasn't already suggested.

[longislandiceme]

12. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? Sort of? I tend to forget that I can just make those sorts of things myself, but I fully take advantage of them when other people create them.
12a. Do you consider yourself OCD? ...Enough to re-number these questions slightly. RP-related: not in the sense of making-charts, but it bothers me when things are out of place/buried under tags in multiple comms, which is why the FH comm's userinfo pleases me so much because before it was all organised like that I kept having to go "damnit, is that info post in plottery or ooc? WHERE IS THAT MAP?" etc etc etc *pets it*
13. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? Meeeeh. I have no real talent for that sort of stuff, but I like using pretty banners other people make for me :D Only one of my characters has a userinfo graphic and it hasn't been updated in foreveeeer.
14. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? I poke around IJ and Hollow-Art when setting up a journal, and then kinda semi-regularly check for new ones. If I need a specific cap/scan/expression/mood/event related thing made into an icon though I have a few people I poke regularly who are fabulous at making that happen :D

[glacial_queen]

What characters do you play/have you played? Karla, Cinderella, 21 and 24, and numerous NPCs with their own journals because I'm like that.

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I started FH in May of 2009 (despite being aware of it for at least two years before then). Tabletop RPGs since high school and LARPing since college.

If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? I repress things about my beginning threads, if that counts?

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? Yes. I keep it to one student and one teacher at a time. I promised my husband and RL friends because I could seriously game forever and supposedly, they want to spend time with me, too. Whatever. Whineboxes.

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Cindy's actually the toughest. I can either make her as awesome and stealth as she is in canon and have NO ONE EVER FIND OUT or I can wear away at her cover and feel guilty I'm not making her as awesome as canon. Plus, she's just not as easy for me to slip into, the Karla is or even the way 21 and 24 were.

I get sad-bleed sometimes, but not angry-bleed. I'm okay with that.

Do you plan things like ships and character development? No planning for ships yet. I have canon character development and I've planned out some things for Karla to face/experience to help her grow, but it's all pretty organic.

Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? I couldn't tell you. That would require way more planning.

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Karla's still friends with people she met on the newbie shuttle, so...

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? I believe in tweaking it slightly? But I think I would be pro-fixing canon if it gets ridiculous. See: Twilight's Dawn

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? More OOC than IC, but how many people are willing to jump in and go along with my insane cracky-canon-plots of horror and trauma. Or even my non-canon-cracky plots of horror and trauma.

How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? Karla has Opera and sometimes there are a TON of tabs open. Everyone else has Firefox, though now I have Chrome and I guess I could use that for FH...or really, anything besides Angry Birds.

Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? LJ-Login & Lazarus. I wish Lazarus would program for Opera.

What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I have the squirreling calendar and Karla's plotty calendar because I kept worrying that I'd double-book her for stuff. Other than that, I'm pretty easy-going.

Do you consider yourself OCD? Not really.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? No, mostly because I suck at layouts and graphics.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? I hunt, though I have made a few of my own. When I first joined the game, the_merriest gave me a huuuuuuuge icon dump of E Harnois because she rocks my socks, and then a year or so later, thatsamilkshake sent me a bunch more that she'd iconned, because she is amazing. And trigons_child made me a bunch of Cindy icons from the comics, for which I can't thank her enough. Me? I think I've made...5?

[vanillajello]

What characters do you play/have you played?
Kate Gregson (WHO IS TOTALLY NOT LEAVING, I FORBID IT), Jeremy Darling, Simon Bellamy, and the soon-to-make-her-first-appearance Natalie Adams.

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?
I've been at FH since the second summer term of '09. Before that, I was involved in text-based RP from ages 12 to 16 and no, I'm not sure why I stopped. I guess the place I was playing at died, and I never found another one I liked before stumbling over FH.

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not?
I think I might be hitting that point where I need to, yes. I think four students will be the limit of what I can handle without just completely ending up ignoring someone. Also, in another way of limiting myself, I wanted to app a girl this time around so as not to end up with just boys on-island, even though I had a really strong guy contender too.

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?
Simon is waaay harder than I expected, omg. He's so quiet that it can be a struggle to keep him IC as to not having him babble, and still giving the other person enough that they won't just end up having to carry the interaction. It's rewarding when I feel like I'm doing it right, though!

As for someone who was tough and bleed-y for a while? Kate, during the break-up/Zach plot, mixed with Hannibal's vampirism and everything. It was important for canonical character development and I'm glad I did it but damn if there weren't a few times I wanted to just give it up and alter the hell out of canon to get out of playing her in such a high-strung way. And yet I still liked that, in a masochistic way.

Do you plan things like ships and character development?
Only about as much as is necessary for planning canon catch-ups. I might have some ideas for future things other than that, but generally it's only on the level of "hey, I should make X talk to Y about thing Z sometime, that might be fun." Like, I already know there are a few people I want to throw Nat at just to see what happens, but I have no grand scheme.

Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences?
See above. I love things happening organically through interaction and can just baaarely see myself really planning a ship, except for possible canon reasons.

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played?
Friendshipwise, Kate/Mitchell and Kate/Leto started out after the Wishverse BDE in the late summer of 2009. Romance? Kate/Bod, even with a 4-month gap in the middle.

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon?
Well, I believe in altering canon, at least, if the Fandom influence makes it make sense. In fact, I almost removed Zach from S2 of USoT entirely but then there_was_life went "if you wanna keep him we can find a way!" and lo, we went through months and months of emo and heartbreak. :D I am gonna kick Kate's S3 bf to the curb, though. I'm not doing that again.

As for my others, I don't see a reason to fix Misfits as of yet and Jeremy is far too precanon for things like that.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH?
Kate/Leto, combined with (what almost was) Kate/Jason, which paved the way for Kate/Bod which I would have never expected to happen because like my partner in crime said above, they're waaay different. I'm still boggling at that, but love it dearly.

How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else?
TabRenamizer, bb. It's a lifesaver. If I use that, I don't need anything else.

[vanillajello]

What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)?
I use GCal, but so far I haven't really been in need of reminders.

Do you consider yourself OCD?
If you look at the way I privately linkdrop every thread I do so that I can find them all in chronological order? Yeah.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters?
Meh, I've found a userinfo template that I like, so I just switch the colours so that each character gets a different one, and then I couple it with a banner and am done with it. All my journals have ready-made layouts from what LJ offers.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use?
I make my own if I can't find any made by others: for instance, there seem to be about two dozen icons of Kate made by other people around, and 20 of those were probably made in the past four months. Jeremy's situation is pretty much the same. So far, Simon is the only one who comes with an abundance of ready icons online, so it's good that I like making icons.

[life_inshadow]

What characters do you play/have you played?

Too damn many. Current list: Jack Priest, Juliet Darling, Quinn Fabray, Romeo Montague, Tara Maclay. Past: Angela Chase, Christian (Moulin Rouge), Claire Fisher, Colette Tatou, Didi (Death of the Endless), Dream of the Endless, Ella of Frell, Elliot Reid, Henry DeTamble, Melody Valentine, Sarah Walker, Temperance Brennan, Tyler Durden (2x), Vi (Potential, BtVS).

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?

I've been at FH since the first week, if not the first day. It's my first RP that's more than an afternoon spent goofing off.

If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things?

Nah. It's all learning experiences.

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not?

I think I have an organic limit. When I get much past three or four on the island, everybody starts getting neglected, so I stay at or below that. But I've never seriously wanted to app someone and not done it just because it would be "too many."

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?

Christian was hard because, once the novelty and the singing wore off, I was basically writing Romeo again. And -- as much as I love Romeo -- I hate repeating myself. Also, this makes me feel like a bad person, but I have a much easier time with mean characters than with nice ones. With nice ones -- Tara and Juliet, for example -- I have a hard time balancing staying in-character with being interesting. (Which is not to say the characters themselves are boring, just that the easiest way for me to ping when I don't have a particular goal for a conversation is with somebody being a snarky bitch. That's in character for Quinn or Jack, not so much for Tara.)

I struggled with the language on Romeo initially, and I still do from time to time. But I feel like I know the way he thinks, which tends to be the thing I can't quite get a hold of when a character doesn't work.

Bleed isn't a big issue, but taking things personally sometimes is. I tend to have a larger problem with my characters acting annoyed because I'm annoyed than the reverse.


Do you plan things like ships and character development?

I usually come in with a rough idea of where I want the character to end up: I apped Didi knowing she was a one-year wonder, and having a few ideas of what she might do with that year. But then sometimes they get their hooks in me and surprise me, and that's beautiful. (For example, initially I thought Jack and Sebastien were inseparable forever. These days, I honestly think Jack's just too stubborn to walk out entirely.)

5a. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences?

I've never had what I would consider a planned ship, where I apped someone expecting a romantic relationship with someone else. I'm not morally opposed or anything, but a big part of what I enjoy is mushing all the canons together and seeing what happens.

The closest I've ever come to a planned ship is probably Puck/Quinn. There, we knew we liked the chemistry on the show, but the question was if it'd carry over into RP. I was happy to see it did -- but if it hadn't, I don't think we would have forced it because OMG CANON or anything.

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played?

Ye gods, I have no idea. Romeo/Dojima is at three and a half years; let's go with that.

2/2

[life_inshadow]

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon?

I mostly don't believe in playing out canon, both because it is work and I am lazy, and because I'm so rarely satisfied with the results! (For myself, I hasten to add. I have nothing but admiration for those of you who make it work well.) The example I always go to is an episode of Chuck I did with Sarah Walker. In canon, the events were self-contained; on the island, organic ripples went beyond what I had anticipated and hurt what I wanted to do with Sarah in the longer term. That's why I usually tend to app either pre- or post-canon, or press the pause button on canon entirely while I'm playing someone. (The exception was Claire Fisher, whose canon for the season I used worked nicely as a backdrop to island events. I suppose I'm doing the same thing with Quinn to some extent, but the show makes me rage so much that I haven't used much of anything past the first twelve episodes.)

That said, I'm fixing Jack's canon as soon as I get a bolt from the blue that tells me how to do it.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH?

Tyler Durden/Tony Stark, always and forever. I didn't even think he liked guys when I apped him.

How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else?

I just use the low-tech approach of opening each ping as it comes in in a separate thread. If I'm at a welcome picnic or prom and I'm getting totally overwhelmed, I'll go to renamed color-coded threads, but that's literally happened maybe four times.

Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers?

LJLogin and Lazarus are all I use, and I only added Lazarus like two months ago.

What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)?

I do a color-coded table every semester showing where I need to be when. That's it.

Do you consider yourself OCD?

Not even close, really.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters?

I'm like Emma -- I do it all in the wait between acceptance letters and the start date, and then leave it forever.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use?

I really only icon-hunt when a character is new. (For example, if you look, almost all of Quinn's icons are S1, because I never looked for them after S2 started.) I go for clean, pretty, and what I almost want to call comprehensible. If an icon is gorgeous but I can't see someone's face -- or enough body language that the face doesn't matter -- it's no good to me. Text is rare, animated icons are an almost never. And I am as picky about clothing, age, and haircolor in icons as I can possibly be; for example, I'll use Titanic for DiCaprio, but I'd never use The Departed because the age difference would distract me.

I can make acceptable graphics, but I usually only do it if I absolutely have to and am very very bored.

[icecoldfrost]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? Current: Ghanima Atreides (atreideslioness), Surreal SaDiablo (harpy_daughter), Morrigan (ofthe_wilds). Alumni: Emma Frost (icecoldfrost) and Dojima Yurika (dojima_hime). Retired: Makita (gorka_wolf) and Anemone (death_of_hope).

2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I've been at FH since July of 2007, when I apped Anemone.

Previous to FH, there was some light-hearted IC/OOC RP in my MMORPGs - Star Wars: Galaxies, EQ2, WoW (all the same guildies, all RP servers) - going back to 2003. There was also the disaster of trying to do some WoD in high school, but we don't talk about that.

3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? I REPRESS THE THINGS YOU PEOPLE LINK TO ME FROM THAT TIME.

4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? Yes. With two jobs and a boyfriend, I don't always have the time I want to play, and I've discovered I can't handle more than two students at a time without someone getting the shaft.

5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Anemone, by far, and yes. But fun bleed!

6. Do you plan things like ships and character development? AHAHAHAHA. Honey, I can't even plan what I'm having for dinner most nights.

I might have a rough outline for character development, or plot ideas that sit in my gdocs from day one, but I like to go organically.

7. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Romeo & Dojima, for relationships, I think for friendship it's Dojima and Reno.

8. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? YES. And I will keep fixing canons. I AM LOOKING AT YOU, MARVEL.

9. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? Ghanima adopting so many apprentices, probably. Or Emma Frost actually having friends!

10. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? As the number of staff in my department has dropped to solomente yo, I don't ping to ALL THE THREADS anymore. I try to keep it to one character per post, and can keep the narrative running with those tags, or do multiple characters and limit who I tag back.

I also rename and organize my Firefox tabs.

11. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? Just LJ-Login and TabRenamizer! OH, AND ADBLOCK. NEVER SEE THE DAMN CREEPY GOAT AGAIN.

12. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I put plots on my personal GCal, and have a reminders of what classes my students should be in and when.

13. Do you consider yourself OCD? Not really, because I enjoy doing OCD! But I can quit anytime I want to. Yup. Really.

14. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? Love love love it.

15. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? Both! With Anemone, I originally had to make most of them myself until the show gained in popularity. But I have a bootleg copy of photoshop and I know how to use it!

[exactlyaverage.livejournal.com]

What characters do you play/have you played? Let's see: Marty Blank, MacGyver, Lorne x2, Spike, Dr. Cox, Jamie Madrox, Ron Weasley, Worf, Layla Miller, Melaka Fray, Dale Cooper, Animal, Dandelion Naizen, Indiana Jones, Dor of Xanth, Lindsay Boxer, Jethro Gibbs, Gunn, K, Jack Carter, Columbus Ohio.

I did a lost username check on LJ. Works wonders for the memory.

How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? Been here since the second week of the game with some time off last year. Haven't really RP'd seriously before that.

If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? Hell there are times I repress stuff I wrote yesterday.

Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? I do now. One student. Two teachers. One almost non-existent townie. It works for me.

Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?

Indiana Jones. Thought I had his voice annnnnnnnd then I didn't. Pretty ashamed how he turned out.

Do you plan things like ships and character development? I always have milestones for my characters in my head. Sometimes they work out sometimes they don't. As for ships I just let it happen and see how they go.

Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? I think the best ones should start organic and then see how it goes from there. Some need planning others can just continue to be organic.

Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Gibbs/Boat. They've been together forever since before Fandom.

Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? I don't think I usually have the right to fix canon usually, even if it is absolutely horrible. My exception is Worf getting a vasectomy so he can never have Alexander in Star Trek TNG. That shit had to happen.

Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? Probably how some characters just seemed so easy to write. Gibbs and Mel were extremely easy to write for me for some reason.

How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? It's all in my head. And I don't stress about forgetting something.

Do you consider yourself OCD? Nope.

Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? I spend maybe... and hour fixing it up and then forget about it.

Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? Used to make my own but now I just icon-hunt and rarely break out Gimp for icon usage. I usually look for the same set of emotions for each character or maybe some iconic moments in the canon.

1/3

[thatsamilkshake]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? Current: Bo Jones (nookiepowered) Alumni: Francine Peters (thatsamilkshake) and Xander I-Married-A-Power-Ranger Harris Carson (formerly soldtoarmenians when he was a student, then needsaparrot when he came back as an adult with an eyepatch. Retired: Cally (onlymistaken), Edmund Blackadder (prof_of_cunning), Emmett Honeycutt (hazlehurstmiss), Illyria (bitchy_smurf), Eliza Doolittle (loverlyviolets), and Door (from Neverwhere - notajar). I also co-wrote Lorne (karaoke_lizard) with willbedone's player for about 5 minutes in 2006, but most of his tenure and all of his teaching came from exactlyaverage.

Elsewhere, which I steal from myself 2 years ago: Lorne, Willow for 5 minutes/a>, Xander, Xander, the Xanderbot, Spike, Spike, Some Dude Who Was Not Andy Hallett, a petulant Spike/Xander-shipping God, an insane AI program whose vocabulary consists of the text of the major Buffyverse flamewars of summer 2003, and a catnip-addicted RPS version of TBQ. Her tomato plants smell like tomatoes!

2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?

At FH, since the beginning, or technically a week after the game started. In general, a bit of tabletop in college in the 90's (GURPS Wild Cards, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, AD&D, and what had to have been someone's home-brewed GURPS version of Necroscope, because the official RPG wasn't published until after I graduated), and then e-mail/LJ RP since about 2002.

3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? What present tense? What un-metaed comic-book names? What NPC!Willow who ended up at Hogwarts? What giant snake? What emo closet? What mutant crying naked in the shower? What bifurcated threesome in the pool? LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEEEEAR YOU. (You think you're cruel, trigons_child? I will make your brain bleed.)

4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? Ahahaha. *points up* Yes. The most on-island characters I can handle at a time is two, and even then it's a crapshoot depending on which characters they are and how well I can schedule things so I don't ever have to play them at the same time.

5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Xander was my first, longest, and I think by the nature of the era of the game in which he was most active, probably the toughest -- the easiest voice, but the one taken most to heart when I hadn't yet learned how not to take things to heart. So yes, the character-bleed was phenomenal, though I tried to keep it all one-way and not let my moods affect the character's. Since then, Francine has had some bleed, but it was much more laid-back and controllable.

In terms of difficult to play because I didn't have the knack, you can slot in pretty much every one-year or one-semester student I've had: Door, Cally, Emmett, Illyria. I don't lose the voice, but I lose the energy to interact with them, start to feel like I'm repeating myself or being boring when I do get them out, lather, rise, repeat, spiral.

2/3

[thatsamilkshake]

6. Do you plan things like ships and character development? 50/50, I'd say. Francine/Katchoo, and Francine's personal development, is very planned, because they have a huge, crazy 15-years-realtime canon that would exhaust us if we didn't plan out how to leap, skim, fix, and avoid. Xander/Bridge was envisioned as something frothy that got way deeper than we imagined it would; Xander's progression through his canon was scheduled to an insane degree, but his emotional growth was always fiddling and twiddling and playing various events by ear. Dolf/Cally was kind of slow and steady and "Let's see where this goes" and then I got into the self-boredom/avoidance/lack-of-development spiral with Cally before the ship got further than 'really good supportive friends who are kind of attracted to each other.' And Bo... Bo is just going with the flow! Because I am crazy and apped from a live canon, so we'll have to see what both her friendships with Fandom people, and her canon itself dump in her lap!

7. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Relationship: Xander and Bridge, since early 2006 (notwithstanding a plotty break that lasted a semester and a half for Bridge and 7 years for Xander). Friendship: Xander and Parker, since late 2005 (or Xander and Willow since they were in diapers, but that one's kind of cheating), followed closely by the Francine/Merlin/Arthur/Katchoo clusterfuck since early 2008.

8. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? Yes, yes, and I have no guilt about it. Honestly, I sometimes have to tilt my head at how closely a character sticks to a depressing/tragic canon when it seems like Fandom and the people in it should have changed their life-paths quite a bit. I do get all the various reasons for that including 'because the angst is fun' and 'because it feels like cheating;' I just don't always agree. (And then sometimes I do and I cry when you kill them but it's gloriously perfect anyway.)

9. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? ...Emmett having sex with Gabrielle? *grin* Especially because that was I believe the result of an e-mail sent about 5 minutes prior to the thread, going "AHKJSHAKLJSHLAKJSH SO YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD REALLY BE HELL FREEZING OVER..." Or on a less shallow note, how oddly well Francine and Arthur get along, considering the thousands of reasons why they shouldn't.

10. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? I don't. Seriously, I can't handle playing mroe than one character at one. I can barely handle more than one thread with the same character at once, which is why you will always find me having bursts of energy then long silences in any given thread, or going for the light banter in all other conversations, if I have something plotty or heavy happening in one.

However, if I can't avoid the multitasking due to scheduling or BDE's, graduation, etc: multiple browsers, renamed tabs, and LJ-login.

Generally I have one browser logged in as mpoetess doing non-game stuff, one logged in as my currently-active character, and one logged in as one of my alums which tends to also have Netflix streaming a movie in it. LJ-login is for NPCs, switching to ft_directory to update admin stuff, or memes and such where I need to switch characters just for a single ping to answer a question.

11. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? LJlogin, LJ Juggler for Chrome, which was designed by our own weldedtomyspine, TabMix Plus (just has a lot of tab cleanup options) and TabRenamizer.

[stykera]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? Currently there is Stark. Previously there was Jool. Harry Dresden and Lindsey McDonald are still kicking around in alumni-land.
2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I've been here since forever. My first LJ RP started in early 2003. I think the first time I played D&D I was 5.
3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? What are you talking about? There was nothing going on then that needed to be repressed. Not even a little bit. Nope.
4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? Not on purpose but I think it's obvious from my very short character list that I end up limiting myself anyway. Usually because I can't think of anyone I know I can do well enough to feel comfortable apping.
5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Jool was really hard to socialize and that made it hard to ever really get her voice down.
6. Do you plan things like ships and character development? Pfft. Do I plan anything?
7. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? I've only ever really had the one here and it was more organic than planned, I think.
8. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Piper and Lindsey have been together for a million years. Or since the very first Homecoming, either way.
9. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? Yes. And somewhat. I tweak the things that bother me.
10. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? I'm not sure. Lindsey is a better person than I ever thought he would be. Stark was never supposed to be obsessed with baked goods and that has turned into a whole goofy thing which is more of a focus for him than cupcakes have any right to be. I guess he needed something to cling to and something turned out to be cupcakes.
11. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? Never really been an issue. I have many tabs going whenever I have multiple threads but it's never been all that hard to keep track of.
12. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? Nothing everyone here doesn't already know about.
13. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I am super unorganized. I got nothin'.
14. 12. Do you consider yourself OCD? Why is there a 12 in this question? This bothers me.
15. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? I have nooooo talent in that area.
16. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? I make my own or beg others to icon for me.

[godofxbox]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? Skank Zero Hopeless-Savage, Z Delgado, Jenny Sparks, Roy Harper, Steve Rogers, Spock, Alex Aaron, Miho, Yomiko Readman, Alex Drake, Jean-Paul Beaubier, Sam Witwicky, Jill/Jack McTeague, Medusalith Amaquelin.

2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I started at FH right at the beginning, and it was my first RP.

3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? Ahahahahaaha yes.

4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? I try to, because if I'm having trouble juggling who I have why would I bring in someone new? But I have poor self-control, so sometimes giddy enthusiasm gets the best of me.

5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Spock's voice is still really, really hard for me sometimes.

6. Do you plan things like ships and character development? I haven't really done a lot of ships, which is sad because I love ships! But most of the ones I have been in were planned. (...I think. Peter and Zero got together so long ago that it's hard to remember, ha.) And it seems like when I do make plans for things like character development, most of the time they don't really come to fruition for whatever reason, so I don't know why I keep trying. Like I had all these big plans for Alex this summer and this summer, for various personal reasons, has been completely shot for me.

7. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences? I don't really have enough experience with the difference to say.

8. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Even though it's over now, Peter and Zero is the longest relationship. The longest friendship is the how-does-that-even-work thing between Zero and Parker.

9. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? To date, three of my characters were dead in canon when I started playing them. (One got better.) So...YYYYY. Although sometimes it's more fun to play with the trauma.

10. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? Zero and Parker are STILL BFFs.

11. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? I'm very disorganized, so I'll try to keep track of it in tabs, but frequently I close things out like an idiot and have to go to e-mail notifications.

12. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? You probably already know this one, but LJLogin. Bow to it.

13. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I use Google Calendar reminders, though I haven't updated them in forever (I got a notice for Jenny to go to work last week...) and an assortment of GDocs with important notes in them. Usually, they do not help, because I fail to refer to them. So basically I try to be organized but am really horribly disorganized.

14. Do you consider yourself OCD? No. See above re: being horribly disorganized. I have a great mind for details, though, as long as we're not talking details as important as, "Have they met before?"

15. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? I'm extremely technologically inept so I would LIKE to but I don't know how. Like the userinfo graphics, I have occasionally gotten as far as finding one I would like to use and then it's just a WALL OF CODE and I have no idea whatsoever how to proceed. Woe.

16. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? See above re: incredibly technologically inept. If I make my own icon, it's probably for a very specific instance, and then I use the LJ cropper tool thinger. So mostly I hunt icons. My main requirements will vary from character to character.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

From what I remember, Peter and Zero were kind of planned. It was a "Oh hey, Peter kind of likes her. I should send an e-mail because I get paranoid about this kind of stuff" thing and then they started dating a few weeks later when it felt like we built up to it enough.

I'm pretty sure.

[dontvotemeout]

1. What characters do you play/have you played? Oh god, I know I'm going to forget some. Currently: Zoe Winchester, Sam Winchester, Chloe Sullivan, Jason Todd, Billy Kaplan. In the past: Layla Williams, Abigail Whistler, Teyla Emmagan, Eowyn, Morgana, Jess Mariano, Anduin Wrynn, Ziva David, Doogie Howser, Trevor Goodchild, Martha Jones.

2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general? I've been at FH since the beginning, and I've been RPing in general since the summer of 2002. (My first game was one of the many Harry Potter RPGs on LJ.)

3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things? Oh yes. Writing posts in first person? THE LACK OF PROPER THREADING, OH GOD.

4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not? I didn't at first, but now I'm limiting myself to the folks I have to not overwhelm myself during the school year. I also have a no-teacher limit now because I suck at writing classes omg.

5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed? Eowyn, hands down. Writing in Tolkien speech was hard, but I'm glad I tried it because she was super fun to play. She didn't cause me bleed, but Sam definitely did. I was genuinely depressed in RL when I sent him off to college, as embarrassing as that is to admit.

6. Do you plan things like ships and character development? Ships yes, character development no (unless the development is implementing something from canon). I let my characters end up with whatever friends and enemies they end up with, but my ships have always been at least somewhat planned.

8. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played? Sam and Peter! *squishes them together foreeeeever*

9. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon? Oh god, yes. That's part of the fun of bringing a character into the game! :D I think it's safe to say I've drastically changed the lives of all people with the last name Winchester, and Jason's going to get...tweaked. Kind of. Possibly.

10. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH? How attached I got to Sam. I totally didn't expect that, since I wasn't really addicted to Supernatural when I apped him, and I was still convinced that I liked playing girls more than boys (LOL). In game, totally Chuck and Sam's friendship. We tried to make them enemies, I swear to god.

11. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else? I organize my Firefox tabs with a) the Colorful Tabs addon, and b) the Tabrenamizer addon. I'll make all the tabs different colors for each character (usually Jason = blue, Billy = green, Zoe = orange) and then rename the tab with whoever the character is talking to in that thread.

12. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers? Definitely the two above, and LJ Login, of course.

13. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)? I used GCal reminders for ages, but now that GCal doesn't always send me my reminders, I use 30Boxes.

15. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters? Once I find a layout that works, I tend to stick with it and just apply it to all my journals. I definitely go for a simplistic userinfo because I am terrible with Photoshop, but when nice people make pretty userinfo designs for me (*cough*deaths_demigod*cough*) I totally use them.

16. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use? I only occasionally "make" my own icons, which means cropping a photo and applying Screen and Soft Light filters until it's bright enough for my monitor. ;) As for how I choose which icon to use, I try to go for either the expression the character is making, or an icon that shows how they're feeling. Also, I totally read my pings to myself and make the face that matches the icon I'm thinking of using when I do it, and I don't really know where that came from, but there you go.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

1. What characters do you play/have you played?
Ha, I just looked this up yesterday. Current: GOB Bluth, Zayne Carrick, Bruce Wayne, Dave Nelson. Former: The Tick, Peter Parker, Jim Halpert (twice), Drax the Destroyer, Doctor Doom, Jolee Bindo, Wolverine, Dick Grayson (twice), Kyle Katarn, Ben Reilly, Yakko Warner, Vance Astrovik, Lucas Lee

2. How long have you been playing at FH? RPing in general?
Been at FH since a few weeks into the game. I try not to think about how many years that is. I did some pen and paper RPGing in junior high, though. Robotech, baby.

3. If you've been at FH since the beginning, do you repress things?
I don't put in the effort to repress how poorly written - from a structural sense, that is, without the prose style - things were, but I appreciate not being reminded of it unnecessarily. SO THANKS A LOT.

4. Do you limit yourself on characters? Why or why not?
Yeah, I do. I really can't play more than two students at once without failing with someone. I'm actually doing uncharacteristically well with Dave and it's still not anything to write home about. Townies are a little less of a commitment, so I'm usually able to keep up with one or two of them at a time. So that puts me at no more than 4 at a time, and I'm more comfortable with 3. So it's both a time and brainspace issue.

5. Who is the toughest character you've played here? Did they cause you bleed?
Three way tie for various reasons. 1) Vance, since I never found inspiration with him and just plain failed hard with a character I love, and who would have been interesting a year later with Angelica around. 2) Zayne, because I apped him before the character was really fully explained in canon, and I just never really quite found his voice... until I transcribed his canon for a year. That was a boot camp that gave me the fully realized character and opened him up to me. It's pretty cool. 3) Yakko. Mind you, it was EXTREMELY easy for me to play him in the moment - clearly, I'm insane - but it was exhausting. And I'm not even talking about the fact that I wrote several short, quick songs.

That said, Yakko was probably the most rewarding writing challenge I ever had. Writing him keeps everyone on their toes, including me. I actually took it as a badge of honor when somebody would threaddrop me saying that they simply couldn't figure out where to go from there. Honestly, that was the most IC reaction I could hope to cause.

6. Do you plan things like ships and character development?
Depends on the character. With Bruce, I have a series of checkpoints loosely planned for character development. With Doom, I originally had a two year plan that I compressed to one school year just to get him to be DOCTOR DOOM faster (one of the best decisions I ever made, really). Zayne had to hit some specific beats, too. But I'll let most of the specifics roll.

With relationships, Erin and I planned out the eventual hooking up of Jim and Pam, but in general those things have come up pretty naturally when it has come up. Really, I've only had 5 characters who've been gotten in ships. And while I might plan out something kind of loosely once there's a connection made, that initial connection is usually natural.

That said, I do have a rule that Bruce can't stay in a relationship too long. It's just not in him. Part of the joy of Bruce effing Wayne is having as many potential love interests as possible.

7. Ships that are planned versus ships that are organic? Differences?
Both have their perks. It really just depends what you're trying to do with the character.

8. Longest ship (relation or friend) you've ever played?
Relationship would be Peter and Zero, who were together for a very long time before I finally dropped him. Friendship? God, I don't even know. GOB doesn't really have friends, or it would probably be him. Actually? Fuck it, GOB and Tino. BFFs. Emphasis on the second F.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

9. Do you believe in fixing canon Y/N? Ever fixed a canon?
I avoid it. I'll change canon if needed to make a character work in the context of the game (like, say, bringing Ben Reilly back from the most definitive death possible (which may be happening in canon anyway!!!!! (http://www.toplessrobot.com/2011/08/break_out_your_powder_blue_hoodies.php)), or having stuff happen to Doom when he's in high school as opposed to college), or if developments in Fandom changes the equation (Zayne having a place like Fandom to return to rather than staying on Coruscant to start a relationship with Jarael). But if I think canon is broken enough for me to have to fix it, it's not a canon that's going to appeal to me anyway.

But really, if you want to know how seriously I take canon, get me talking about what I can use from the DCAU for Bruce sometime.

10. Most surprising thing to sneak up on you character wise during your time playing at FH?
Yakko's very existence? Ben ending up in a loving relationship? Dave having the perfect roommate for him? I don't know, everything's a surprise, really.

11. How do you deal with a many threads happening at once with multiple characters? Do you organize your Firefox tabs? Set up multiple browsers? Something else?
I just open up the tabs and cycle as needed. If I have enough, I'll just go straight to notifs.

12. Any Firefox or Greasemonkey add-ons you can recommend for other RPers?
I only use LJLogin.

13. What sort of other organizational things do you do to help you play (meaning spreadsheets of classes, post it notes, GCal reminders, GDocs with notes on them etc etc)?
I keep a Sticky (the Mac program, not an actual post it) with my weekly classes just as a reminder. When I'm inspired, I'll keep track of who my kids have had classes with, mostly to see when a full introduction is needed. But that was it... until Bruce.

I have several spreadsheets for him, for everything from how he knows people, what he knows about them, if he's made out with them, and what's in his cave's trophy room.

14. Do you consider yourself OCD?
Yes, but not always in the ways you'd expect.

15. Do you like playing with layouts and userinfo graphics for your characters?
I've used Smooth Sailing for every character but Jonah, but I'll often change the colors around and have often made banners. I've done a couple userinfo graphics, but they're not for me.

16. Do you make your own icons or go icon-hunting regularly? How do you choose which to use?
It depends. I made all of GOB's myself because I didn't care for the icons that were out there and I found a site with screencaps. I made Dave's myself because it's impossible to find NewsRadio icons that aren't just Dave/Lisa. I only made a couple for both Jims. I made all of Bruce's, and all of the art icons for any comic characters I've had. But I've only made a couple Joseph Gordon-Levitt icons for Zayne, though.

It really depends on how many good icons are out there already. I'm an idiot if I don't take advantage of all the great Office icons for Jim. But if I'm going for a still largely unknown like Sean Faris and I have to cherrypick from several movies, I'd rather make sure I get the tone I want by doing them myself. Even if it does require watching half of a tortureporn horror movie he was in on Netflix. (Incidentally, if anyone ever wants to icon the second half of Ghost Machine for me, I won't complain. But I have no interest in watching the rest of it. It's bad and just too graphic for me to find it fun.)