Meme: How did you pick your characters?

[single_man_tear]

Was a meme requested? No. Did I want a meme? Yes. So I picked through the list of meme and found this one, which apparently hasn't been done since 2012.

Why did you pick the characters you play?

Be it because they're just your favorite, or you thought they'd be a challenge, or someone dared you or something, go ahead and tell us what made you want to bring them to the game.

Comments

[deathsmajesty]

SOME PEOPLE have declared that they can look at the f-list and just be like, "Oh, that's a Nuance-character," which I DISBELIEVE.

I work in mysterious, unfathomable ways, okay? Very mysterious. Super unfathomable.

(But really, the number of people who called out Adrian as being mine before I'd even properly put my name on him was NOT SMALL. XD)

[single_man_tear]

Yes. So mysterious. I am amazed at your mysterious ways.

[ifwebeworthy]

To be completely fair, Elaine did DM me asking, "Did you app? I thought you said you weren't apping," before going, "Oh, then it's Nuance."

[joan_of_bark]

I am still convinced you do a bimonthly wellness check to see if you have the exact correct balance of snarky hypercompetent mage full of hubris vs doe-eyed ingenue exploring their identity on your roster. You probably calculate this with multiple decimals.

[theworst_verine]

Ohhhh nooooo. I would neeeeever know your blorbos. Noooooo.

[thatwaslucky]

So what we've learned today is you can never stealth.

[stykera]

THE TRUTH HURTS.

[knightinshinarmor]

You know what's funny, though, is I actually didn't know that you were playing some of your characters.

And I am, of course, classically the most on the ball about everything in this game!

[neurotic author's note: that second paragraph is SARCASM, I have just been talking about how I'm oblivious to all things.]

[single_man_tear]

Dean Winchester - So I had been out of the game for a while and suddenly after multiple projects had settled down at work and home life had become manageable, I started toying with the idea of coming back to FH. I had been playing an online D&D game with a few of the players online for a couple of years at that point so I felt like it was a good time to return.

And then I couldn't think of anyone. So I forgot about it and went back to my usual binge watching and playing D&D. Now I had based one of the characters in my campaign very loosely on Dean Winchester and because of some in character decisions, that character had to leave the party and I brought in a new character. But I REALLY liked the idea of playing Dean.

So I went back and forth a couple of times and finally after chatting with Nu about it I sent in the app. I think part of the real reason I sent him in is that I also had a different mindset when bringing in him. I didn't have a goal for the character, which I had whenever I app'd other characters. I just wanted to throw him in and see how he did.

And I think he's doing pretty good.

Kamala Khan - So I was staunchly saying the entire time after I app'd Dean that I was NOT going to have another character. Nope. Didn't need one. Dean was fine. All I needed was Dean. Who needs another character? Not me.

And then the app session opened for new characters was posted and I immediately started thinking of who I could apply. Yes, I'm that guy.

I wanted someone a bit lighthearted this time around. Originally it was not Kamala at all. I was thinking of Gar Logan aka Beast Boy and that was sparked by Gabriel Picolo's artwork he had been posting showing Beast Boy and I started reading the graphic novels by Kami Garcia and... I think what really killed it for me is the lack of icons the way I wanted them and while I liked the graphic novels it wasn't really that inspiring to me at the time.

So that was it. I was done. No student app for me. I then turned on the TV and went to Disney+ and there on the "Watch Again!" category was Ms. Marvel which I LOVED when it came out. And my brain went: "OH! There we go."

And I wrote the app in about an hour.

Yelena Belova: I believe what happened here is that I was looking at another person's app while I was re-watching Hawkeye during the scene where Yelena Belova was talking to Kate Bishop and said: "You know what this island needs? Florence Pugh characters."

And so I wrote the app.

[joan_of_bark]

Kreia - look, Knights of the Old Republic 2 has been my bullshit since forever, she's the most provocative and divisive character in there and she fascinates me. Absolutely not long-term character material, but I dropped a whole bunch of characters in summer and needed something to tide me over while I brooded on next steps... so I said screw it, let's play Kreia for a semester and finally get that one out of my system.

Jesse - we needed a new mayor, and I always try to look for a certain 'oh, that person would absolutely be able to handle Fandom' kind of quality in mayors. Which has gotten us Cable (big picture thinker), Tamsin (used to the supernatural, gives no shits) and Ron Swanson (gives no shits, kind of weird) in the past. I love Remedy Entertainment's batshit games like crazy, so I just went... you know, Jesse is a low-key total badass already used to being pushed into responsibility over immensely weird multiversal bureaucracies. She's basically made to be a Fandom mayor. Let's go for it.

Lucifer - 2019 was an extremely stressful year for me, between moving out into my own place, dealing with a complicated new career as a freelance journalist, and my mom having escalating panic attacks which turned out to be a harbinger of a fatal disease. I kind of fell into watching Lucifer because someone was using Tom Ellis as a PB for an NPC I found interesting, and it became my soothing 'I just need something stupid but fun and charismatic to relax myself' watch. And then Dante graduated and left and you know what, the position of sex-fueled ethereal extrovert with emotional issues on my roster opened up...

Poison Ivy - I have been a huge fan of both Ivy and Harley since I was a young teenager for, uh, subtextually and now textually obvious reasons. I collected a whole bunch of comics featuring both of them in the 2000s but dropped that off with the rest of my comic book habit. And then totalwildcard came into the game, and I said, "ha ha ha, this takes me back, almost makes me want to app Ivy!" and then Harley-mun just kind of went steel-faced "maybe you should".

Problem: I hadn't collected anything Ivy related for years, there's no DCU Ivy as of yet, I've never liked any of the versions of her in the various CW shows, and the Harley Quinn animation series can't be viewed in my country. I got back into the old cartoon and seriously considered apping that version of her, but the cartoon version is... very stylized, shallow (which makes sense!) and her slapstick bits make me feel a bit uncomfortable in 2024. I kept noodling at the thought and eventually gave in and ordered some trades of the GWW comic, just to see what she was up to in comic book land. And promptly fell completely in love with what GWW was doing there. Harley-mun grabbed some of the comics too, eyed the cartoon, and pointed out we both liked the comic version so much better.

At which point I realized that GWW's portrayal of Ivy is very self-contained to that run and I can get away with not reading a decade's worth of Ivy comics. (I will probably wind up doing that and am already on my way, but still.) And surprised myself with how excited I got about exploring this particular version of her. I wrote the app in the space of an afternoon and knew it was the right decision.

[magicinmyskin]

Someone

[joan_of_bark]

(and in terms of characterisation reasoning:

Kreia: I just love characters who ask questions and try to come at the world from a different view entirely. It's fun reasoning out how they'd approach something, and challenge other people, even if they ultimately turn out to be wrong.

Jesse: The contrast between her being quiet and unassuming but also very weird in lots of little ways (and the knowledge she is the Director, a kind of ultimate superhero, in her world - even though no one else knows).

Lucifer: An injured, traumatized character who puts on a front to hide it and must find people who love and challenge him to break him out of his patterns and starts healing + extreme extroversion making it easy to ping in + absolute almost Looney Tunes-ridiculousness meaning I can always make him the butt of the joke when I want to + creature of incredible power trying to be human = me-catnip.

Poison Ivy: An injured, traumatized character who puts on a front to hide it who has found people who love and challenge her to break her out of her patterns, but who isn't done healing yet and is still in the middle of a process + an outward stoicism that isn't without warmth, charm or dynamism + creature of incredible power struggling to balance her misanthropy with her humanity + coming at the world from a different point of view and asking questions... yeah okay it shouldn't have come as a surprise that I'd love her.)

[thatwaslucky]

Rey Skywalker- So Fry had Skywalker boys and I had a Solo girl so when the trailer for The Force Awakens came out I think I went "DIBS" on Twitter because I was betting she was gonna be a Skywalker girl. (Sort of right, eventually.)

Then I saw the movie on Friday, got to the part where she stuck the old pilot's helmet on her head, went "Oh no I love her" and spent my next few viewings (you can't judge me, I have no shame) trying to get enough into to write the app before deadline on Sunday.

Kitty Pryde- At the time in the game Caritas wasn't getting a lot of love so I decided I wanted to app someone for it, saw Kitty's name on a Wikipedia list of fictional bartenders, and hey, maybe I could play her. So I read all her comics up to that point (seriously, to my knowledge, ALL) in like two months and went for it.

Sabine Wren- I'd seen some of Rebels thanks to them bringing in Thrawn and Wedge in season three, but thanks to the characters in game at the time I watched the whole series and oops look who turned out to be exactly my type.

[ifwebeworthy]

Gray - I needed a new student, and I loved the idea of him falling asleep in various places/situations and the things that could be done with that, plus an immortal in high school is always funny lbr.

Raiden - It was always gonna be either Gray or Raiden if I apped from these dumb books, and once I apped Gray I was like, "Well, that decision is made, I can't do Raiden, two characters from one canon and it's this canon? No way." And then stuff kept happening that made me go, "But Raiden would LOVE Fandom." Summer posted something about pizza-flavored beer and that was the last straw.

Lydia - I started reading the book already with the possibility I might app her in the back of my head, because, "Lydia Bennet, but with magical powers," is an amazing concept. I hit the page where Mr. Collins starts making French horn sounds and that was it, I was in love, this was happening. And I will admit that making people go, "But Lydia Bennet," was part of my motivation. The biggest problem was that by the end of the book there were, like, three other characters that I also thought would be great in Fandom, but I stuck to my guns.

Don & Thor - This concept first started percolating in my head during the comics run I ended up pulling them from, so...circa 2008. I love all the ways they're so different while having been effectively the same person, and the ways they relate to each other, and I loved the idea of how people would relate to/interact with them. And then we got a different Thor while I was waiting for more canon, so I back-burnered it. And then I stopped reading comics entirely but every now and then I would think, "Man, what if Don & Thor?"

And then one day I looked at Gray and Raiden and realized they had a lot of similarities, actually, and I decided I might as well look at apping Don & Thor for real after all this time since I'd never quite given up on the idea.

...and then I found out that Don is an insane supervillain now, so that was...fun...but hey, comics means never having to say you're not cherry-picking!

[drumsticksandd20s]

I -- look, we know my thing is smart-mouthed queer ladies who like to hit things (and possibly have abandonment issues). Like this is literally the formula and I've lost all capacity to feel shame about the fact that I require at least two of these characteristics.

Steph Gingrich - The very first time Steph shows up in Life is Strange Before the Storm she's behind a DM screen and I was already like "oh no, I love this kid" because BtS Steph is a lot of fun. And then. AND THEN she gets a bigger role in LiS True Colors but the first time we see her, she's dancing like a dork and air drumming in the radio booth? Which Alex thinks is the coolest thing ever because Alex is absolutely right? I love absolutely everything about that game but I swear this girl was specifically geared to come for me.

Beta - The only real departure from this formula unless you count her tech skills as a very specialized form of hitting things. Okay, and we don't actually know if she's queer, but we definitely know the two people who share her DNA are (thanks, Burning Shores DLC!) so it wouldn't surprise me and I kind of headcanon her as being somewhere on the aro/ace spectrum. So again, not really part of the formula but if you take "gifted child never allowed to forget the extremely high expectations imposed on them and absofuckinglutely struggling with it" and add a generous helping of debilitating anxiety, that's going to resonate with me SO HARD so yeah.

As for all my alums and ex-pats, you will never convince me that Tahiri didn't have all the UST in the GFFA going on with Jaina so yeah, they all fit into that formula. Hitting things is literally what she, Beau, Yasha, and Kennedy all do.

[solo_sword]

I really do need to go back and read all the UST. There was so much.

[stykera]

Look, this deeply traumatized glowy alien became my favorite almost immediately when I first saw him. And now I've had Stark since the beginning of time, basically.

Belle I was going to app a looooong time ago and then I just wandered off from the game for a while. But once I came back I wanted a student and she seemed like the best choice, especially since I'd started an app for her like 7 years before. I love OUAT in spite of its many many flaws and Belle delighted me. I thought about Rumple but he'd be much more difficult. I still occasionally toy with the idea of bringing him in but it will probably never happen.

Sam who is off dealing with regular Muppet nonsense at the moment came out of a conversation with Fry I'm pretty sure. And then I went "huh, a completely ridiculous character would be fun and this could actually work as a concept" and then I brought him in. He may return in the summer. We shall see.

[theworst_verine]

I feel like what types we pick have changed or evolved as we've grown older (ancient, decrepit) so idk, really.

I can say dark haired, pretty and tragic who I get to make fun of is a decent through line.

[drumsticksandd20s]

I am shocked. SHOCKED.

[hashtag_chocobro]

Work decided to be HORRIBLE today, but I want to at least cover the Chobobros, since they possess the brain cell most of the time these days anyway.

But, like, with Prompto?

Me, two seconds before starting FFXV: "Look at this tool, he looks so annoying, I am totally going to hate this guy."

Me, two seconds after meeting him, lying on his back in the middle of the road complaining about dying from having to push a run-down car: "OHNO I LOVE HIM."

And that was when I knew I had to bring him in.

I had no intention of bringing in Gladio or Ignis, either, but then I brought them in for Prompto during a Parent's Weekend and, my GOD, Ignis' voice was SO much fun to write, that I knew I wanted to figure out a way to bring him in after that, too.

And I couldn't have Prompto and Ignis and NOT have Gladio, too. So....

(I could get away with both having Noctis because lol what a WASTE, although he would have been fun to have, too)

The rest is history.

[deathsmajesty]

I had no intention of bringing in Gladio or Ignis, either,

BUT COULD YOU IMAGINE???

You might never have truly understood the depths of hatred that Jace has earned :(
Or read Forsaken :((((((((((

[knightinshinarmor]

I don't know who I am without a hyperfocus character and sometimes I app that hyperfocus character in the game! . . . Both Remy and Duke fall into that category. Duke was more the adult classic version where I get AGGRESSIVELY INTO the character sort of accidentally. Remy was my VERY FIRST BLORBO though, so as I am currently between hyperfocus targets, I'm like "hey, let's go back to the very beginning!"

And you know what? No regrets.

[knightinshinarmor]

Okay, now that I'm not actively trying to be social 'cause my darling host has gone to bed, let's try for a little more depth.

Duke. Um. Yeah, honestly, I watched Haven, got obsessed with this pirate dude, went "hahaha, but yeah, we've got a whole port with no boats in it!" and my replacement for Eliot Spencer wasn't sticking as well as I'd hoped. So I figured, sure, let's play a charismatic morally-grey-coded character who deep down is just deeply traumatized and lonely and wants to be loved! I love those characters!

And he stuck like nobody's business.

Remy. I mentioned that I am currently between hyperfixations. I've been flailing around wildly looking for a new one (who even am I if I am not obsessing over a character and making them suffer in scenarios when I go to bed at night???) and ended up deciding to go back to a very old one instead. And thus spent much of last year catching up on thirty years of X-Men canon featuring this boy. I've toyed with the idea of apping him repeatedly over the years, but always chickened out (somewhere on an old external hard drive is my attempt to describe X-Men comics canon that descended immediately into a rant about how weird Charles Xavier is). Marvel 616 canon is TOO BIG, how could I POSSIBLY --

Well. Then I realized that after All New X-Factor Remy is briefly a) single and b) at loose ends. And even better, c) is in the DC area. I had a point to pull from. I was fresh off a massive read of the canon. He's my very first blorbo.

The stars aligned. The app went smoothly with minimal rants. (*cough cough*NEW SON WTF*cough*) I even managed a writing sample without too much difficulty. And now, he's here. And I love him.

And I promise to only replace "th"s with "d"s for special events. ;D

eta OH ALSO X-MEN '97 EPISODE FIVE HAPPENED. THAT WAS ALSO PART OF IT ALL.

Buckle Up, This Is Long, It's Not My Fault, You Got Me Talking Meta, Now Suffer

[deathsmajesty]

Okay okay so if we're doing this for real...

As has been so RUDELY mentioned upthread, I have several types, one of which being hypercompetent mage full of hubris (the others being: magic-adjacent badass femmes here to kick ass and pretend they're normal, doe-eyed ingenue on a journey of self-discovery, random crack characters, and "dudes? sometimes? I guess???"). But secretly, what I really love are narrative arcs.

(Which is why the occasional crack character shows up, because they are easy and do not require narrative arcs and then I can send them away when they start trying to become real three-dimensional characters.)

I have real difficulty taking tossing a character into the ring just to see what they'll do. My characters don't need to have a goal, but I do. So I am drawn to characters that have a large, obvious narrative arc that I can chart towards. It's not a static goal, as people change with circumstances and that's a huge part of the fun of FH, and I like being flexible so I can incorporate other characters and changes of circumstances, but I like knowing that my character will start here and end up somewhere over around there(-ish), so even if the character itself is getting no traction with folks, there's still always something for me to poke at.

Liliana is entirely my catnip. Apped in 2022 after 2020 & 2021 made me flame out entirely (trying to go through those years undiagnosed and unmedicated like lol) and then promptly vanished again. But she kept calling me back to play for a bit, then I'd drop, then I'd come back...on and on until finally, in September of 23, I settled back into the groove for good.

But why, beyond "hypercompetent mage full of hubris"? Because she's perfect. Just ask her.

At least, she's perfect for me. She's layered. She's got flaws. And, more importantly, she's got a narrative arc that I find intensely satisfying. So, like, when she debuted in 2007, her personality was "Sexy, but make it evil." Again, her name is an anagram of "A Villainess." We're not talking subtle here. The Lorwyn 5 were the first playable Planeswalkers released and were, "Our Hero, The Telepath," "Perky, Hot-Headed Tomboy," "Check Out My Tits, I'm Evil," "Furries' Wet Dream With Uncomfortable 'Noble Savage' Undertones," and "Me Hunter, Commune With Animals." We knew that Liliana had made a pact with four demons for immortality and eternal youth (suck it, Endymion in the Greek myth), and also a ton of power, and her first comic debut is fetching an incredibly powerful artifact, cursing and nearly killing Me Hunter, Commune With Animals (in fairness, he absolutely tried to kill her first). Then we had Agents of Artifice (which, funnily enough, she's talking about in today's Consortium post with Dean), where she is scheming and manipulating to try to get out of her demonic pacts, but fucks up by falling for Our Hero, The Telepath (which I maintain is just a serious case of bleed for having to pretend to be in love with him for six months). This is the first time we see her a little more humanized, like yes, she's a scheming and manipulative liar and her actions absolutely get Jace tortured and people killed, but she also sabotages herself at the end, because just before the finish line, she realizes that, fuck, she really does love that guy. Then we go back to Check Out My Tits, I'm Evil when she tests out the power of the Chain Veil by razing an entire plane pretty much to the ground. Then there was a novel so bad that Magic refused to publish it even though they'd already paid the writer they'd commissioned to write it. I don't know the details there, either of the book or the decision-making process to refuse to publish, but damn I wanna.

Finally, in 2010, The Raven's Eye is published, a 3 part comic (though the 2nd part is forgettable and only exists to show that Liliana has been unwittingly in the Chain Veil's orbit for a long time) and it changed EVERYTHING. In it, we get the backstory of Liliana as a white mana-using healing cleric that worshipped the progenitor of angels. One who was dabbling in necromancy, yes, but because she thought that harnessing the power of death could make her life magic so much better and more effective in this time of war, and one who loved her big brother more than anything else. And then she was lied to and manipulated to not only give him a potion that would kill him, but then would also raise him back up as an undead creature trapped in an unlife of torment, who swore he would be waiting for her after she died so he could repay the favor. That her Planeswalker sparked kicked in so she could get AWAY from all the death and destruction and the horror of what she'd done, as her brother strangled the life out of her.

That's when I sat up and took notice. Like, I'd always loved Liliana because I am a black/blue deck girlie and she was a) the black Planeswalker, b) a woman in a male-dominated game, and c) I'm shallow. But suddenly, by giving her this backstory, they complicated her beyond Check Out My Tits, I'm Evil (except for how Our Hero, The Telepath, can make her not be with the power of loooove *eyeroll emoji*). Suddenly, there's a narrative there. How did she get from angel-worshipping healing cleric to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark? What happened? Sure, a reaction to losing her brother, but why go necromancy and not full healer? What happened? As a Planeswalker, she had godlike, reality-warping powers, but she couldn't fix Josu. Why not? How would that make her feel?

We never (and likely will never) get the full answer to that (which means, ooooh noooo an empty sandbox for me to play in, wooooe), but we did get another few stories. One was the Innistrad plot that I adapted in January where Liliana literally tortures and war crimes her way into getting what she wants, and then, another g(G)ame c(C)hanger with "The Fourth Pact" which is a slight retelling of her tragic backstory, as well as showing her reaction to the Mending, where she lost her godlike powers and is an old woman in her late 80s/early 90s, trying to stave off death (and the specter of seeing her brother again) and, yes, lamenting her lost powers.

Then the Multiverse reshaped itself, robbing her - and every other Planeswalker - of the godlike power they once had wielded. Some called it the Mending, as if something broken had been repaired, but to Liliana, it seemed the opposite. It broke her beyond any hope of repair. She had spent decades working to regain even a fraction of the magical might she had lost, and it was not enough--not enough to keep death at bay. Josu had promised that they would be together in death, sharing his eternal pain, and Liliana would never let the icy claws of death fulfill that promise.

And at some point, I realized that though the team at WotC had certainly not intended it that way, the Mending is actually a good analogue for suddenly becoming disabled. In an instant, Liliana's body and powers betrayed her. The world as she knows it turns upside down and inside out. She could do some of the things she'd been able to do before, but it took far more effort and for something that was a pale shadow of what it was. Some things, she had to relearn, finding a different way to do them. Some things were entirely out of reach for her. And it took years to find out why. One minute, everything was normal. The next, life as she knew it was irrevocably changed.

This is a very powerful thing for me because I suddenly became disabled, via a lot of medical nonsense I'm not going into here. I couldn't walk. For awhile, I was in a wheelchair. Then I was on crutches. Then I was on crutches for so long, I had to go back into a wheelchair because I'd managed to fuck up my other leg. I had to relearn to walk. I had to spend a lot of time thinking about my future, my plans, my hobbies. I can't drive anymore and the loss of that independence is often maddening - the simple freedom of going wherever I want to, whenever I please is gone. If I knew I could make some pacts with demons to gain back what I lost...I can't say I wouldn't take it.

Was vanity and selfishness and a love of power part of the reason Liliana made those pacts? Hell yeah. But so was a fear of dying, and - what motivates her even more than that - so was the idea of helplessness. Black mana is about agency. It's about gaining enough power that you have the final say over your own life. It's about wanting and hoping and feeling so hard that you will let nothing stand in your way.

Black believes that nothing will change unless you make it change; ultimately, black's self is the only one it can trust to bring about the world it needs....While white and green are more amenable to finding hope and holding it aloft as a banner, black claws hope desperately to its chest with shredded, bloody fingernails. Every ounce of hope black has, it tore by itself from the clutches of an uncaring world.

(from The Color of Hope, an excellent tumblr post)

I'm just saying, I could vibe with that, especially in a post-Covid world.

And then, WOTC did the unimaginable. They let her grow. While still remaining quintessentially Liliana Vess (and sometimes Serafina Onyx). It was a slow process, with numerous setbacks, but she grew. And she grew without the motivation of Our Hero, The Telepath's love or approval, she grew because she started letting people back in. She started peeling away the callouses of isolation and refusing to care, the shields she'd put up to keep from feeling vulnerable, from feeling helpless, the shields she put up because her self-loathing (which is roughly on par with her legitimate arrogance) tried to tell her she was unworthy of love and friendship.

But you put Liliana into a populated are for more than twenty minutes, she'll have adopted at least three people while firmly telling herself no she didn't. She starts fighting for people beyond herself. Hell, she chooses to sacrifice herself to save the Multiverse.

That, my good people, is one fuck of a narrative arc.

So yeah, I love her because she's my bullshit. I love that she's powerful, that she takes no shit from people, that she's arrogant and charming, that she's ride-or-diemurder for her people but she'll also sell out almost this whole island without batting an eye if she had to. I love that she's a giant fucking nerd who would be so happy sitting around talking magic and philosophy and literature and music and working on things in her workroom. (shout out to Tony) I love that she's unrepentant about so many things and that she genuinely believes she has no soul to lose when she makes her pacts. I love that losing Josu was the greatest loss in her life and I love that if, given the option, she wouldn't change it, because that would mean never having ignited her Planeswalker spark. I love that she derides people for throwing themselves into danger and then does the same thing, but it's different. I love that she's a liar, a schemer, a manipulative bitch. I love that she learned that from other people and turned them into weapons to wield herself. I love that she lies to herself more than she lies to anyone else.

I love that she's a mage who carries knives around and will stab someone if she has to. I love that she knows how to break bones and doesn't need magic to do it. I love that she is a walking ball of contradictions, that she laughs when she's hurting, and that her two guiding principles are "Look Out For Number One" and "Never Let 'Em See You Sweat."

I love that she gets to be a person, not just Check Out My Tits, I'm Evil.

And that, dear ones, is my incredibly long-winded essay on why I apped Liliana Vess.

(I'm so sorry, rest of my roster, you're not getting this treatment.)

And, finally, the requested curly tail.

Re: Buckle Up, This Is Long, It's Not My Fault, You Got Me Talking Meta, Now Suffer

[single_man_tear]

CURLY TAIL HAS BEEN ACHIEVED! LET THIS BE KNOWN TO SCHOLARS GOING FORWARD!

[sharp_man]

Oof. Okay, so.

Hannibal: TBQ mentioned on Twitter that "someone should play him", and I was like, "play him where?" because the idea of being a hypercompetent gleeful does-what-he-wants guy seemed fun, and so did the game! (Yeah, okay, he's a cannibal. Pfft. Details.)

Lana came about because Star Wars is tied for my first fandom with LotR, but I'd never met a character that really spoke to me in "I'd like to explore them and think I could do them justice" way. And then I was playing SWTOR (which, btw, is Len's fault), and went, "You know..."

And then Jon. I listened to The Magnus Archives, and I was kind of looking for someone new, and at the end it was between Jon and Martin, but apparently what I really wanted was a scraggly little know-it-all with major self esteem issues and a self-imposed eating disorder. Seriously, though, there's just so much to him! He's so traumatized, but keeps surviving, and has had to have so much strength, but he doesn't know it. He'll dive into hell to save people, even if they wouldn't do the same, but still calls himself a coward. He's walking PTSD, he's been a god, he's been manipulated all his life. And he has no idea how to go about anything. I figured he could handle Fandom, even if he wouldn't think he could.

[hasaknightjob]

Ha! I love that I got a shout-out in yours at the same time I was typing up a shout out to you in mine.

[hasaknightjob]

So I knew about Moony but he'd been such a hot mess in the comics canon-wise he didn't do anything for me. At least not until the Jed McKay run which is amazing, but even there it's more I appreciate what he's doing with the story and the character but on its own it would not have been enough to push me.

Then we have MCU Moony and oh my god was this me bait. Thoughtful and purposeful translation of psychological problems! A character with inner conflict represented by distinctly different aspects of himself (recall my first FH character was Angel(us)). One's a stoic guy with walls over severe trauma who thinks he knows best for everyone! Another's a sweetie who thinks he can help everyone if he loves them hard enough! Another doesn't have enough canon to go on god damn it but STILL. Together they work for a god who sorta kinda has good goals but is a manipulative piece of shit! Yes please!

Also MCU Steven is superior to comic Steven, sorry not sorry.

Anyway, they captured me enough that I kept thinking about them and wanting to do something. But with my brain being broken as it is these days writing fic was never going to happen. I still wanted to play with them and that's when I remembered oh wait! There's this RPG I know! Maybe I could do something with them if all I had to be responsible for was pings and "Yes, and."

Then, when I was chatting about it with Llwy, it came up that there was an island map and I saw there was a museum on it. Which felt like a sign given that Steven was a gift shopist. And somebody in fh-chatter - I apologize that I keep forgetting who - but when I talked about being tempted to app Moon Knight but having to wait for student apps to open, someone said townies were always open. So I figured what the heck. Whipped up an app, sent it in, ta da!

*jazz hands*

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden will be much shorter, so yay!

Anyway, one of the things I have trouble with after a long hiatus is figuring out what all my characters were up to in the interim. They've missed out on all this CR and gossip stuff, so why? Where were they? If I can find something that works, I feel better about coming back. Liliana was easy - she was a Planeswalker, she had Planeswalking things to do. My previously apped student, Meeka Joffrey (alas, you deserved better) fell to the dual issue of "I don't have a good excuse for you" and also "your icons are weird and fuzzy and bad icons makes me not want to play you for reasons I cannot explain."

(I have since learned that this is something DW does and I don't know how or why and they haven't responded to me. I should follow up.)

Long story short (too late), Meeka was out and I was looking for a new student. I also wanted someone from some version of modern day Earth. I had Liliana for all the 'viewing Earth as an outsider' commentary, I wanted someone who I could make jokes and references with, and who would react like someone in modern America would to things or get mad at things...simple basic things that would ground them in reality.

Also, playing a student from modern Earth is harder the further we grow from that age, and I thought it would be fun to play with that. What cultural touchstones would we share? Which are far too Millennial for her to get? Arden had a thread with Charlie where Charlie was shocked Arden hadn't heard of Firefly, and I checked and was like, "That single season aired two years before Arden was even born. She's not a fandom nerd, she didn't spend much time online in fannish spaces, of course she's not going to know what Firefly is. She probably doesn't know who Joss Whedon is! Arden is a cusp baby on the tail end of Gen Z, just a few years too old to be Gen Alpha. Figuring out what she knows and how she interacts with stuff is a fun mini-game on its own.

But, I also like powers, sue me. I don't get to have powers in real life (boooo!), I like to play with them on the internet instead. So between wanting modern Earth and powers, that led me to read more urban fantasy and keep a weather eye out for a suitable candidate.

And, like Len said about, I love me some doe-eyed ingenues exploring their identities. We meet Arden and she's early-20s, working for Callista to pay off her debt, completely ignorant about almost everything about her heritage, her powers, and even the other kinds of Othersiders. She knows the basics, but has to learn everything as she goes - while, of course, unraveling a mysterious disappearance and stumbling onto a larger conspiracy, because urban fantasy is gonna urban fantasy.

(Urban fantasy is the direct descendant of noir detective fiction and I will fight you on that.)

So I was reading it and I was vibing with it, but there were also some parts that just completely flabbergasted me. Like the bronze nails get brought out as a threat in the first book, but the fact that they'd been used on her before at sixteen is completely glossed over, at least until book number whatever when it comes out that not only had they been used on her but that Callista had beaten her so badly another person was afraid she wouldn't remember it, either through damage or trauma? And sure, some of it was just "the author decided this in a different book," but there were enough little...trails to nowhere that I immediately started trying to fill in the blanks. And that pretty much immediately led to her coming to Fandom. No one in Fandom would let her just passively accept being kept ignorant. Nobody in Fandom would let her go without properly learning to use her powers. Fandom would both explain where some of these gaping holes in her understanding came from and also encourage her to close them.

As I know I've mentioned before, I also really like playing a character who looks like/was raised as/believed for most of her life that she was a mixed-race Black girl, who was, savvy enough to be aware of The Culture, but wasn't exactly in The Culture. That's important to me, for reasons^TM

The funny thing about Arden is that when I bring in a character, I usually have an idea of how I'm going to adapt their canon for FH. For Arden? I have no idea. I don't know how, I don't know if I will, I don't know if I can. This is pretty much my equivalent of throwing her in and seeing what happens. I know where I want Arden to get emotionally, but where she gets post-FH? Man, y'all's guess is as good as mine. Throw suggestions in the comments, idk.

THIS IS TECHNICALLY SHORTER, SHUT UP

[slothbabyproductions]

Throw suggestions in the comments, idk.

I know a sand dune that has ideas.

[witchoftheflesh]

Navaan - as I have mentioned several times in various places, Navaan is just a wild gremlin character that I could do whatever I wanted with. I have no idea what I was thinking when I apped her the first time, probably something very similar to "I need a character that is a rest for my brain," but this time, I ended up rereading some of her classes and laughing my way through them and immediately decided I needed to do that again.

Senshi - I just love Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi. And Senshi is just the very best character is it. He's warm and lovable, everything is a teachable moment, he has surprising tragic depth...

So far, there are two problems I am running into: 1) I apped him precanon and that's actually very rough, because there are a bunch of experiences he only has after canon starts that I can't draw on, and 2) ....So remember above when I mentioned I needed narrative arcs? Well...guess who doesn't have one. And yeah, I'm struggling.

Adrian - So, I knew Navaan was on her way out, and I've found 3-4 is a good number for me, so I'd started idly looking for replacements. Not like a proper hunt, but just keeping an eye out. (Y'all nearly got a magical teahouse instead, but I couldn't find good icons.) I started reading Hell For Hire because I enjoy Rachel Aaron and had apped Julius (I'm sorry, bby, I did you dirty) and Opal (who was around as an NPC for a BDE) from her books, and I figured, what the hell? I'm gonna read it anyway, might as well keep an eye out for an appable character. At first, I was fixated on Bex, a Demon Queen fighting to free her people, and feels useless and small compared to all the stories of her past selves (when she dies, she is reincarnated as an infant with no memories of her past). Also, she has a baller Winnebago. Prime Nu-bait. But, other than the potential for her as a high school student, there's no convenient place to app her from and no way she would leave her loyal band of demons behind.

And for a hot second, I was like, "guess not," until I realized that...while Bex was prime Nu-bait, the character I was actually enjoying the most was Adrian, not Bex. Blindingly smart, a super nerd about magic, loves the land and growing things, is passionate about JUSTICE! He's the moral inverse of Liliana. And he's somewhere between my two extremes. On the one had, he's a very powerful witch and he takes big risks because he's certain he can pull them off...and on the other hand, this is literally his first time out of the forest and around people who aren't his family since he was 13 and 1/2. He's a really fun mix of a grown man who knows exactly who he is and what he wants, but he's still learning about the world and how he fits in with other people, and learning about himself through that angle.

Just an absolutely great melding of (two of) my favorite tropes and I like him so much, I'm looking for pale guys with curly hair because I wanna do right by him.

[mustbeawitch]

*ahem* Point of order, most of the people Adrian was around the last time he left the forest age 13.5 were apparently also family members.

#justicefortheblackwoodboys