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thisisalex) wrote2018-07-18 07:32 pm
thisisalex) wrote2018-07-18 07:32 pm
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gooseberryhigh YEAR ONE CHARACTER POST MORTEMS
disclaimer: i did not read over a single one of these before posting them.
CODE BY TESSISAMESS
Ah, Nate, my original character that fell apart. I really should have accepted that his initial concept needed tweaking early on and tried to work on that, but instead I just dragged him through the back half of the game. It's too bad, because every time I've played him since graduation, I've enjoyed it a lot. He's just kind of a dork and a good kid, very smart and very tightly wound, and there's nothing wrong with that Nathaniel!!!
Something I really wish I'd figured out how to work in more was all the headcanon I had for his dad. He was estranged from his family and kind of a weird guy before his head injury, and his head injury just, like, exacerbated that. Nate was always worried that there was some kind of dormant mental illness that was just waiting to come out and ruin his life the same way it ruined his dad's. I thought it was a really interesting thing to play with, but Nate was such a closed book to most people that it just never came out.
But the times I've enjoyed playing Nate the most include every single time he, my little genius boy, was the dumbest and most clueless boy alive. Hey Mom & Mom all my shoes are fucked and prom is tomorrow, can you help me with that?? Thaaaaanks. I also loved when I realized he and Zav knew each other from Ilvermorny and now they were dorkass animals together and that lightning log of them in the thrift store is my favorite Nate log ever.
Nate gets the shortest post-mortem because he was so neglected but just know that I love him still.
CODE BY TESSISAMESS
MY SON. MY TERRIBLE, AWFUL, SHITTY SON. Ugh. Okay, I’ve mentioned this a lot, but Robin is the latest iteration of a character I’ve been playing for years. I think I made him when I was like 17? And I’m 30 now? I cannot believe how easily he transitioned into this environment, and trying to imagine playing him as just another alcoholic auror is hard now. You can never go back to Ireland, Youngblood.
OKAY, SO, FIRST, I was, hilariously, very nervous about picking up a fourth character at GB because I was like, am I just doing this because I CAN and not actually following my INSPIRATION??? But lol that didn’t last long, because I got super excited about playing him and wrote his app in about four hours. I didn’t think through a lot of what I was doing with him, I just kind of did it. The longest I spent trying to decide something was figuring out if I should move Rosy out of Occlumency so Robin could follow his dream, or do something where he couldn’t get into Occlumency because of his grades and had to go for, like, Divination instead. (Robin won, Robin gets everything he wants in life.)
Now we finally get to the kind of character I love to play and play all the time. Total garbage boy, unapologetically shitty, selfish, and absurdly confident. It’s also a character that can be VERY HARD to keep likeable if they’re not also fun. I kind of wonder if the fact that Robin is more or less, uh, amoral has anything to do with actually making him MORE likeable?? But??? idk. I try not to overthink what makes Robin work, because he’s kind of a delicate balance. I couldn’t watch anything with his PB in it for a while when I was playing him because I didn’t want anything influencing that weird balance.
BUT OKAY ANYWAYS, MY BOY. MY PERFECT BOY. Making him a survivalist cyberpunk conspiracy nut who also wanted to work for the government was one of the best decisions I made in this game. Trying to justify WHY my kid who was taught from the day he was born not to trust the government would want to WORK for the government was very hard, and I did consider other career choices for him. There was a hot second where I thought maybe he could be a drama kid instead and wanted to be an actor who showed up in comic book movies as the comedic relief, but it just… didn’t click. Even the idea of him being a hitwizard didn’t work, he had to be an auror, and I figured if anyone could play the game of I’m A Walking Fucking Paradox, it would be this fucker. He’s a hillbilly who will dox you for correcting his grammar, a soulless asshole that made a special bed for his snake so he can bring him to work, a nerd who can barely fucking read, a bassackwards country boy with more money than he knows what to do with. He doesn’t need to justify himself, fuck you if you think you can talk him out of this, he’s Fox Mulder, he’s John Munch, he’s Robin Maverick Youngblood and fuck you he knows what he’s doing.
One of the things I decided off the top of my head I don’t even know how many weeks into the game was that Robin’s snake had low self esteem (or that Robin was projecting onto the snake, YOU KNOW, WHATEVER), and it was a) one of my favorite things I did with him, and b) actually kind of perfect. Like, Robin does not have a lot of empathy for humans. It takes a LOT for him to even really get attached to another human, and anyone who chooses to be friends with him is in the wrong here. But his snake??? FUCK YOU if you touch his snake, his snake is a projection of his OWN insecurities which means he’s BASICALLY ROBIN and he’s gonna teach him to be a BADASS and y’all better WATCH OUT for that.
But no seriously if you’re friends with Robin you’re wrong. He will not take care of you. Robin has a Big Ol’ Dark Side that didn’t come out in the game. I’ve always played him as a Slytherin Auror, and I love atypical representations of Slytherins, but he can be Real Bad sometimes. It’s one of the reasons I love his wand so much; a blackthorn wand for someone who walks that fine line between good and bad, but just chooses to side with the good. I spent about two days lamenting the fact that he wasn’t a part of this year’s endgame, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that would have pushed him from likeable rascal to maybe someone who should be in jail??? If he was faced with trying to tell the difference between a mimic of his friend and his friend, he would have no problem killing both of them and letting god sort em out later. If one of his friends died, there would have been about as much emotion as their was in that party split scene, but then he woulda moved your ass off the damn trail and kept on moving. Shit, Tess would have had to put him down because he’d be just slashing and burning everyone in his path. He’d be doing it because he just wants to get to the end and win, not because he wants to save anyone or thinks the moose guys are gonna bring everyone back. Because Robin is Bad.
OTHER UNORGANIZED THINGS, BECAUSE THIS IS THE LAST ONE I’M WRITING AND I CAN’T ORGANIZE FOR SHIT:
CODE BY TESSISAMESS
For the record, Dahlia got the most half-assed app I've ever done. This works for Dahlia, my lazy but passionate goof. She would absolutely play six characters in an online RP for about six months.
There's a very strong possibility that Dahlia is my happiest character. If I'd put more time into her and played her longer, maybe she wouldn't have been, but I think there was something to the fact that she was always down to just feel her feelings. There's no grinning and bearing it, no repressing to make other people more comfortable: if she felt it, she showed it, and maybe that's healthier. Every time I've played her since graduating, she's gotten more and more ridiculous, and I'm into it. Why not just let her BE???
Things I enjoyed the most about playing Dahlia include how she was not the least bit self conscious. I think I initially intended for her to have some kind of body issues because of her pageant days, I thought about maybe touching on something like gender and whether she was trying to present as something other than a girl or if it was a direct reaction to having to do so many high glitz pageants. In the end, though, she was just chill being herself. And, like, shit, who am I to stop her from that?
Despite not playing her a lot and half-assing her app, I've always felt like Dahlia is a fully realized person. She's not a super deep person, but she's there. She plopped into my head with a bunch of dumb nuances to how she interacts with others and how she sees herself. I've just forgotten most of them, because most of them came to me while I was driving through California. I just often think about how she threw herself off her broom to catch the Snitch in the championship quid game and I think of how perfectly fucking in character that was for her and I can't even explain why. It's not that she loves Quidditch that much, and she didn't feel like they HAD to win or her entire high school Quidditch career was a waste, it was just that, in that very moment, it made sense.
This post-mortem is only technically longer than Nate’s. Way to win, Dolly.
NATHANIEL DAVID BIRD
NATHANIEL BIRD
Ebonhide • Class of 2014
Tightly wound country boy with a lot to prove.
Ah, Nate, my original character that fell apart. I really should have accepted that his initial concept needed tweaking early on and tried to work on that, but instead I just dragged him through the back half of the game. It's too bad, because every time I've played him since graduation, I've enjoyed it a lot. He's just kind of a dork and a good kid, very smart and very tightly wound, and there's nothing wrong with that Nathaniel!!!
Something I really wish I'd figured out how to work in more was all the headcanon I had for his dad. He was estranged from his family and kind of a weird guy before his head injury, and his head injury just, like, exacerbated that. Nate was always worried that there was some kind of dormant mental illness that was just waiting to come out and ruin his life the same way it ruined his dad's. I thought it was a really interesting thing to play with, but Nate was such a closed book to most people that it just never came out.
But the times I've enjoyed playing Nate the most include every single time he, my little genius boy, was the dumbest and most clueless boy alive. Hey Mom & Mom all my shoes are fucked and prom is tomorrow, can you help me with that?? Thaaaaanks. I also loved when I realized he and Zav knew each other from Ilvermorny and now they were dorkass animals together and that lightning log of them in the thrift store is my favorite Nate log ever.
Nate gets the shortest post-mortem because he was so neglected but just know that I love him still.
ROBIN MAVERICK YOUNGBLOOD
ROBIN YOUNGBLOOD
Coppertale • Class of 2014
Could probably survive the apocalypse, can't survive a D&D campaign.
MY SON. MY TERRIBLE, AWFUL, SHITTY SON. Ugh. Okay, I’ve mentioned this a lot, but Robin is the latest iteration of a character I’ve been playing for years. I think I made him when I was like 17? And I’m 30 now? I cannot believe how easily he transitioned into this environment, and trying to imagine playing him as just another alcoholic auror is hard now. You can never go back to Ireland, Youngblood.
OKAY, SO, FIRST, I was, hilariously, very nervous about picking up a fourth character at GB because I was like, am I just doing this because I CAN and not actually following my INSPIRATION??? But lol that didn’t last long, because I got super excited about playing him and wrote his app in about four hours. I didn’t think through a lot of what I was doing with him, I just kind of did it. The longest I spent trying to decide something was figuring out if I should move Rosy out of Occlumency so Robin could follow his dream, or do something where he couldn’t get into Occlumency because of his grades and had to go for, like, Divination instead. (Robin won, Robin gets everything he wants in life.)
Now we finally get to the kind of character I love to play and play all the time. Total garbage boy, unapologetically shitty, selfish, and absurdly confident. It’s also a character that can be VERY HARD to keep likeable if they’re not also fun. I kind of wonder if the fact that Robin is more or less, uh, amoral has anything to do with actually making him MORE likeable?? But??? idk. I try not to overthink what makes Robin work, because he’s kind of a delicate balance. I couldn’t watch anything with his PB in it for a while when I was playing him because I didn’t want anything influencing that weird balance.
BUT OKAY ANYWAYS, MY BOY. MY PERFECT BOY. Making him a survivalist cyberpunk conspiracy nut who also wanted to work for the government was one of the best decisions I made in this game. Trying to justify WHY my kid who was taught from the day he was born not to trust the government would want to WORK for the government was very hard, and I did consider other career choices for him. There was a hot second where I thought maybe he could be a drama kid instead and wanted to be an actor who showed up in comic book movies as the comedic relief, but it just… didn’t click. Even the idea of him being a hitwizard didn’t work, he had to be an auror, and I figured if anyone could play the game of I’m A Walking Fucking Paradox, it would be this fucker. He’s a hillbilly who will dox you for correcting his grammar, a soulless asshole that made a special bed for his snake so he can bring him to work, a nerd who can barely fucking read, a bassackwards country boy with more money than he knows what to do with. He doesn’t need to justify himself, fuck you if you think you can talk him out of this, he’s Fox Mulder, he’s John Munch, he’s Robin Maverick Youngblood and fuck you he knows what he’s doing.
One of the things I decided off the top of my head I don’t even know how many weeks into the game was that Robin’s snake had low self esteem (or that Robin was projecting onto the snake, YOU KNOW, WHATEVER), and it was a) one of my favorite things I did with him, and b) actually kind of perfect. Like, Robin does not have a lot of empathy for humans. It takes a LOT for him to even really get attached to another human, and anyone who chooses to be friends with him is in the wrong here. But his snake??? FUCK YOU if you touch his snake, his snake is a projection of his OWN insecurities which means he’s BASICALLY ROBIN and he’s gonna teach him to be a BADASS and y’all better WATCH OUT for that.
But no seriously if you’re friends with Robin you’re wrong. He will not take care of you. Robin has a Big Ol’ Dark Side that didn’t come out in the game. I’ve always played him as a Slytherin Auror, and I love atypical representations of Slytherins, but he can be Real Bad sometimes. It’s one of the reasons I love his wand so much; a blackthorn wand for someone who walks that fine line between good and bad, but just chooses to side with the good. I spent about two days lamenting the fact that he wasn’t a part of this year’s endgame, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that would have pushed him from likeable rascal to maybe someone who should be in jail??? If he was faced with trying to tell the difference between a mimic of his friend and his friend, he would have no problem killing both of them and letting god sort em out later. If one of his friends died, there would have been about as much emotion as their was in that party split scene, but then he woulda moved your ass off the damn trail and kept on moving. Shit, Tess would have had to put him down because he’d be just slashing and burning everyone in his path. He’d be doing it because he just wants to get to the end and win, not because he wants to save anyone or thinks the moose guys are gonna bring everyone back. Because Robin is Bad.
OTHER UNORGANIZED THINGS, BECAUSE THIS IS THE LAST ONE I’M WRITING AND I CAN’T ORGANIZE FOR SHIT:
- I really liked playing with Robin’s intellectual insecurities, though. He was at genius school, he wanted desperately to get into a program that was well above the reach of his grades, and it was the one thing that hard work and gumption just couldn’t fix. And because it was his one major failing, the thing that kept him up way too late, he got so mad when people called him a dumbass or implied he wasn’t smart. Call him an asshole, a hillbilly, ugly, useless, any of those damn things, but bring up his one insecurity and you get white boy rage.
- I’m so glad he became a cousin to the Quayle family, who deserves better. Like, Doc is actually probably about 75% a pretty cool dude who ran away because he wanted to marry a Muggleborn, but his kids are terrible and he taught them bad things.
- I headcanon that Robin got off the waitlist for the Auror program because Doc called one of his family members and told them he’d donate to one of their campaigns or charities or some shit if they pulled a string or two to get his boy into damn ass Area 51 Auror school.
- One thing I ABSOLUTELY LOVED with Robin and I will keep trying to work into future incarnations of him is how he kind of gave exactly zero fucks when it came to gender norms. Like, expectations in general can kind of just fuck off?? But shit, someone’s gotta be a domestic goddess around here, he’s gonna bake y’all a damn ass cake and y’all’re gonna fuckin’ like it because he’s got some needlepoint to take care of over here shitheads. Call him if you need a fitted sheet folded.
- One thing I ABSOLUTELY HATED with Robin was his DAMN WRITING. He didn’t use apostrophes, used as many abbreviations as possible, and spelled things wrong all the damn time. The thing that got me the most was the apostrophes. My autocorrect was fucked up for at least six months after he died oh my god. I will probably continue to write any future Robin incarnations as having bad grammar, swearing too much, spelling things wrong sometimes and saying y’all a whole bunch, but the apostrophes are COMIN HOME.
DAHLIA HELENA HALE
DAHLIA HALE
Ebonhide • Class of 2014
Pageant princess turned Quidditch queen tries to find herself. Doesn't.
For the record, Dahlia got the most half-assed app I've ever done. This works for Dahlia, my lazy but passionate goof. She would absolutely play six characters in an online RP for about six months.
There's a very strong possibility that Dahlia is my happiest character. If I'd put more time into her and played her longer, maybe she wouldn't have been, but I think there was something to the fact that she was always down to just feel her feelings. There's no grinning and bearing it, no repressing to make other people more comfortable: if she felt it, she showed it, and maybe that's healthier. Every time I've played her since graduating, she's gotten more and more ridiculous, and I'm into it. Why not just let her BE???
Things I enjoyed the most about playing Dahlia include how she was not the least bit self conscious. I think I initially intended for her to have some kind of body issues because of her pageant days, I thought about maybe touching on something like gender and whether she was trying to present as something other than a girl or if it was a direct reaction to having to do so many high glitz pageants. In the end, though, she was just chill being herself. And, like, shit, who am I to stop her from that?
Despite not playing her a lot and half-assing her app, I've always felt like Dahlia is a fully realized person. She's not a super deep person, but she's there. She plopped into my head with a bunch of dumb nuances to how she interacts with others and how she sees herself. I've just forgotten most of them, because most of them came to me while I was driving through California. I just often think about how she threw herself off her broom to catch the Snitch in the championship quid game and I think of how perfectly fucking in character that was for her and I can't even explain why. It's not that she loves Quidditch that much, and she didn't feel like they HAD to win or her entire high school Quidditch career was a waste, it was just that, in that very moment, it made sense.
This post-mortem is only technically longer than Nate’s. Way to win, Dolly.