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

[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.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

[wildgalegirl]

Okay, so in Charlie's defense, she is a massive geek and would be shocked that anyone hadn't seen Firefly - or Doctor Who or Torchwood or LOTR or, or, or.

And by the way, damn it, Nu. I have read four and a half books this weekend comprising books 2 through halfway through 6 of Arden's books. I mean they're wondeful, but I had other books to read first and I just couldn't!!

(I've read both of Adrian's too, but that was just two books, not ten!)

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Oh no shade! Charlie is a geek and has people of different ages she has a relationship with! She has people to show her things from Ye Olden Times. I am playing Arden as Gen Z in a vacuum, which is a highly different vibe.

And wooooo!! I REGRET NOTHING.

[wildgalegirl]

Oh no, that was just a 'Charlie is a big geek so Arden shouldn't be bothered by things Charlie thinks she should know'!

And just, damn it. I had other books to read!