![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png) gooseberryhigh YEAR ONE & TWO CHARACTER POST MORTEMS |
[Jul. 18th, 2018|06:58 pm] |
disclaimer: i did not read over a single one of these before posting them.
RILEY MAE STAMPER
RILEY MAE STAMPER
Azurcrest • Class of 2015
Y1: Tiny terror from the tundra, back from a rough year abroad.
Y2: She’s glitter and spice and not very nice.
CODE BY TESSISAMESS
Oh, Riley Mae. Riley is easily the biggest departure from the kinds of characters I usually play. I used to almost never play girls, and when I did I was worried about them being Positive Representations, or at least not Super Problematique, and that’s probably why I was never very successful with girls. It’s hard to just play a character when you’re more worried about the dumb shit they’re doing than they are. And Riley is honestly kind of a mystery to me. Where did she come from?? How did this little trash fairy fall out of my head after like ten years of playing, like, one emotionally constipated girl and then a bunch of trash boys?????? Idk but she broke the mold enough that I ended up playing just all the terrible girls and god bless you, Riley Mae.
A N Y W A Y S. Riley is one of those characters where I wish I had done more with her, but I’m also not sure where I would have gone with her. She definitely suffered from some flanderization, going from being a whiny, shitty mean girl to an incredibly dumb glittery butt-grabber and hangry brat, and especially in y2 she got more or less punted into a corner. Maybe if I didn’t insist on taking myself right up to the character limit every single time, I would have expanded her horizons and I would have had time to make her a deeper character, with goals and feelings and motivations. But you know what? Fuck it. I had a lot of fun with Riley. There was never a moment where I was like, god, I can’t stand playing this brat another moment.
She was also just so easy to play sometimes, especially as she got dumber. You just down a glass of wine and then forget how to use your words to resolve a situation, and you’ve got Riley Mae Stamper. Not having to really analyze her motivations or get into a specific headspace for her was pretty freeing, tbh. No, she’s not going to blow your mind and do something heroic or out of left field, and her involvement in the metaplot extended mostly to, like, hitting on monsters, but keep an eye on her because she might do something really funny for about eight seconds.
I’ve thought about reskinning Riley for other characters throughout the two years of playing her, and there are elements I might bring over to others. But there’s just something very specific about this Riley that would be hard to completely copy in another world. She’s a part of the landscape of Gooseberry High, I’m holding each and every one of you responsible for this little monster.
MISCELLANEOUS SHIT:
- I love her middle name a lot and I’m glad it basically morphed into her name.
- Sorry I made a very Problematique thirsty dumbass lesbian, super glad text-based journal RP is not a medium consumed by the masses because she would be hella judged.
- Riley was supposed to come back from England with a bad accent and it was my own fault I forgot that in her very first log, but I did enjoy bringing that back for when she played Mrs. Lovett.
- Somehow Riley never got punished by having to go in the kissing closet with a Gross Boy, and that fits, because Riley apparently deserves everything good in this world.
- Riley was a serious contender for an endgame participant all year, but Nisha getting the unicorn horn and the three of us deciding the Trashcan Trio should do endgame together got her bumped down to fourth choice. Cheryl and I joked a lot about how if Riley had ended up trying to do a sacrifice round, she would have just refused to release the mimic. I’m not gonna say yes or no to your stupid dumb game, I’m gonna take a nap. I’m not trapped here with you, you’re trapped here with me.
ROSEMARY ASTREA STOKER
ROSEMARY STOKER
Ribbonfin • Class of 2015
Y1: Sarcastic prefect trying to manage temper, competitive streak, and bad influences. Trying.
Y2: Fox in fish clothing tries to find strength in diplomacy.
CODE BY TESSISAMESS
UGH. MY GIRL. This is what happened after Riley opened the floodgates and made me okay with playing girls, I got incredibly attached to this one. To be fair, Rosy is kind of in line with the kinds of girls I usually play (high strung, sarcastic, tough as nails), but they’re still usually not my #1 kid.
Despite her being my obvious favorite, I did sometimes struggle with playing her. Not so much trying to figure out how she would react to something (Rosy’s a very reactive character), but trying to keep her likeable and engaged enough to keep playing her. Which was maybe my problem with playing my asshole girl characters in the past? Worrying about keeping them just likeable enough that people still want to interact with them. And, honestly, Rosy could have gone that way easily. Her saving grace was giving her a very strong maternal instinct, as well as making her more or less an aspirational floppy fish. Wanting to be nicer kept her just on this side of being absolutely awful.
Y1 endgame really solidified her as one of my favorites, though. Dinah actually kind of got the same treatment for Y2 endgame, and there’s just something about playing only a couple characters through some insane shit for one to two weeks that really forces you to love them. The two main things it did that year were drive home how much of a big dumb Gryffindor she really is (she walks a very thin Slytherdor line, but she’s a fucking lion) and solidify those friendships. I felt very strongly that she would die for the others in the Fishy Foxy crew and she wasn’t just saying it, and the loyalty that it bred made it a lot easier to let her be her intense and sometimes unlikeable self in y2. Removing that border between Rosy and a select few friends also made for such an amazing and emotional y2 endgame, which has some of my absolute favorite scenes and at one point I took an extra long shower because I needed to just sit on the floor and fucking sob for like fifteen minutes. Also?? It would kind of scare me sometimes how everyone would be like, “Rosy said we’re doing this, so let’s go,” because I just knew she was going to lead people into a very bad situation. Like, if y’all didn’t listen to her maybe you would have ended up at the Grotto right away??? Instead of winding up with four fucking macguffins and Rosy jumping off the Astronomy tower. Geez, guys.
Playing Rosy was also sometimes really fucking stressful, because she’s so intense and reactive and emotional, but she has to turn all those emotions into anger. Playing a character with such severe depression could be really hard sometimes, and I did not know how I was going to pull her out of her downward spiral. Which was really bad because I kept just making it worse??? Like, I didn’t need to make Rosy cheat on her boyfriend when I was going to have her break up with him at some point anyways. And I didn’t need to make her start a fight with Sy that ended up lasting like two weeks???? sending her into an even worse pit, but that’s what I fucking did and it was the worst time of my girl’s terrible life. I really didn’t know how I was going to give her a happy ending, either. I had at least one (1) minor freakout over the summer between y1 and y2 because I knew Rosy’s happy ending would have to involve kids and a career, but who was she going to have kids with????? There wasn’t a single character in the game that I could see her clicking with and having a terrible family. Turns out the solution to both problems was allowing sixth characters, #thanksdaniel.
I liked some of the arcs I got to play out with Rosy, even though some of them were a little more background. She really found her feet as a Ribbonfin, especially in year two, even though I didn’t directly acknowledge that on screen. She was always very worried about being too mean and controlling compared to all the floppy fish, was never very good at things like compromises or diplomacy (see her trying to deal with every mimic in y2 endgame, some people are just hopeless, sorry Mr. Hightower), and she had a lot of concerns that she was hurting herself by trying to be something she isn’t. I’m not sure what exactly it was that helped her feel more secure in her choice of house, but she seemed to relax into the idea that she was one of the protective, self-sacrificing, emotionally repressed Ribbonfins. She was never going to be one of the typical floppy fish, and once she accepted her role as Probably The Worst Ribbonfin, she kind of chilled the fuck out on it.
I also unabashedly love Rosy and Danny and I wish we could have done like a year-long slow burn. Rosy having a boyfriend at the beginning of the year would have changed how it worked out, and having Danny to fight-flirt with for most of the year would have changed a lot of things about how the year went for her, but I love them a whole whole lot. I really did not expect her to get so much as a crush this year, I wanted her to just kind of chill as a single lady for a while, but then Jenny made Danny and I basically boyfriend-hunted him, whoops. Oh look, single straight boy, gonna go pee on him and claim him as my own.
The thing currently stressing me the hell out about Rosy, though, is the fact that I don’t have a feasible replacement for her. Like, I have a Robin replacement for FWA, and I can already tell the other one’s going to be a little closer to Austin, but not Rosy. And I don’t know how I could possibly replicate her anyways because she’s kind of a package deal, and, like Riley, a product of Gooseberry. I just… I love my girl with her very bad mish mash of strength and weakness, guarded sarcasm and vulnerability, hard edges with soft gooey insides, who’s smart and athletic and intense and codependent. I don’t think there’s going to be any replacing her and, hoo boy, it is getting to me right now at noon in this damn office.
MISCELLANEOUS SHIT:
- I was always very worried about her being too OP (because she’s both very intelligent and very athletic), so I tried to balance her out with a lot of bad traits, and then I would worry that I gave her too many negative traits. I think it somehow worked out?? I don’t know???
- When I started writing her app, I put her possible nicknames as Rose and Rosy, and Rosy just felt more right. I didn’t think at all about how I spelled it (Rosy vs. Rosie), and it took me a good, like, two weeks to realize I made it match Sy’s name. Which is funny because I put a lot of thought into making sure her middle name matched his (similar theme, language, spelling, and it made their names the same length), but her first name just kind of happened.
- I was really feeling a different PB for Rosy at first, but at least three people voted for Nicole, so I went with her and thank god I did?? I don’t think the other girl has a lot of projects I could have worked from anyways, and she goes from cute girl next door to oversexed model super fast, which would have changed A Lot about my girl. Also, Nicole has a mask icon to match Sy’s mask default ;-;
- Rosy’s very very very first concept was as someone who did everything her parents wanted her to, was ostensibly the Perfect Daughter, but kind of just rolled her eyes behind their backs while biding her time until she could chill the fuck out and go be a stay at home mom or something. You can definitely see a very few elements of that in what she became—like the Perfect Daughter part (though she got a lot worse at that) and the maternal instincts. I liked how she changed, though, so she wasn’t just effortlessly nice and charming, but had to work really hard to be even the least bit charming. It made her feel more like a real sibling to Sy, as opposed to someone set up to be his diametric opposite.
JEFFERSON ISAIAS KEY
JEFFERSON KEY
Azurcrest • Class of 2016
Y1: Excitable sports fanatic loves bad ideas, refuses to learn from past mistakes.
Y2: Sweet-natured and super stoked athlete, always ready for ill-advised adventures.
CODE BY TESSISAMESS
My favorite type of character to play can usually be classified as Complete Garbage. Usually an Asshole. There’s almost always some level of snark involved, no matter how well-intentioned they are. And Jeffy is, once again, not my normal type of character. Looking back, it’s obvious now that he was a reaction to Robin, who is absolutely a Completely Garbage Asshole, but usually I can’t sustain a completely sweet natured character. Their selfishness and biases come out eventually, and that’s when I know they are one of Mine.
Jeffy has almost none of my typical character faults. He is, through and through, just a Good Dude, and that’s probably why I struggled with him a lot at first. Most of my characters change as I get into them, some of them completely fall apart and don’t follow their established personality at all, but Jeffy never changed to fit my personal mold. When I was doing Y2 rewrites I barely even had to touch Jeffy’s app, he was still so dead on, and even now I don’t think I would have to change really anything??? What a good boy. It was really just a matter of me seeking him out and finding him.
And I think I know the exact line that really set my baby boy in stone in my head, and it was after the sophomore séance, when he said that they just needed to keep this between the forty of us. Honestly, when I said it, I was being sarcastic, but when the other sophomores didn’t call him out on it and seemed to just go along with it, I realized that was exactly who he was: naïve, genuine, and super down with ghost antics. Maybe Jeffy would have changed if I’d played him more this year, or if he’d gotten a bigger part in Y1 endgame. I put him out of commission in Y1 so I could play Rosy, and when I realized how prose-heavy endgame was I was glad for it, because I struggle off and on with Jeffy in prose. Sometimes I can do a two-sentence tag for a character, but Jeffy has always needed two or three paragraphs to get a full thought out, and with the amount of shit going on, it was best to keep him out of the line of fire. Despite the fact that my big strong athlete boy would be super useful a lot of the time???
It’s my own fault he didn’t get a whooole lot of play this year, and I did feel bad about sidelining him for Y2 endgame (always a bridesmaid, Jefferson). I love my boy, and I would always be like, “YEAH, TIME TO PLAY JEFFY!!!” but shitposts were hard to follow when I was trucking, and his journal posts always had to be like eight paragraphs long with ten wards because he was so gd busy, and do you know how hard it is to organize a post for a character that is canonically bad at organizing when you, yourself, are OOCly very bad at organizing?? It’s a struggle, y’all. So Jeffy kind of got shunted aside a lot, BUT there are some things that worked out really well for him!!! Which… I’m just going to put in list form, because apparently Jeffy makes it difficult for me to organize in general.
- I love the Sweet Dumb Babies. :c Their utter inability to be a proper goddamn couple delights me, and every time they successfully flirted it made my heart go thump. I basically refused to ship Jeffy sophomore year because he was an innocent infant and I could not conceptualize him doing more than blushing at a girl, but it turns out that’s what he does as a (NON-SEXY) junior with a crush, too.
- Oh my GOD the Chickabros turned into the best cabin I could possibly hope for. So weird! So supportive! So completely unable to deal in irony!! Unless a group of people was acerbic and spiteful 24/7, Jeffy could probably fit in pretty well with most groups, but the Chickabros (and all the Junior Jays) is a really natural fit for him.
- Jeffy never once learned his lesson. No matter how many times he got in trouble or something went really fucking poorly, that naĂŻve fucking optimism just shined through and I love my pure boy.
- Sidelining him for Y2 endgame was actually probably for the best. I had hoped to do more with him as a real boy (and I actually really enjoyed full on movie monster Crispy Beff), but having to hurt someone that looks like a friend of his would… that would have hurt. That would have hurt me. He’s a big strong boy so I figured he could be useful, but he’s soft and he needs to be protected.
- So many good Sportball things for him???? UGH I LOVE IT. I did not expect him to make it on the school team his sophomore year because he was so new, and that was such a fun experience. Having all the different types of people interacting, with sweet baby Jeffy in there with some super shitty kids, that was a fucking blast. And then him being school captain this year T-T It’s what I wanted for him and I was so happy for him, my boy deserves the world!!!! I hope he never experiences heartache!!!!!!
- Also love that the worst injury he sustained in a game was a bloody nose. It’s like the bludgers didn’t want to hurt him either :((((
MISCELLANEOUS SHIT:
- I wish I’d done more with his TAing, and I fully intended to do a book club and all, I just never quite got my shit together. THIS HAPPENED A LOT WITH JEFFY THIS YEAR I’M SORRY BABY BOY.
- It’s funny to me now that I was super into the idea of apping Lucas for about two weeks, had a personality and history sketched out, made icons of Christopher Mintz-Plasse from Role Models to use. And then I abruptly pivoted and decided that if I had to choose between a Quidditch player and a Muggleborn I’d have more things to do with a Quidditch player.
- His PB does not loan himself easily to being a shiny happy young man. I used the same, like, eight icons of Jeffy because they were perfect and he had such a bright smile, but there was just not a lot of option there. I made a shitton of icons of Riley from Degrassi, but trying to icon Jeffy from the same seasons was just, uh, not working super great.
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