ways_back_room | I was pondering...

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I was pondering...

...the relationships my various pups (four, now, in Milliways) have with each other.

I was re-reading the thread I had done with

terminalfrost shortly before the Armageddon clock was disarmed, where I played Asar-Suti and Khayman, and she played Rabastan Lestrange and Strahan, and mused that often the pups belonging to the same mun tend to be friends or realtives of a general and not-too-close nature. That way, one can use the abilities of two or more in the same plot and can handwave them having talked about a certain subject, but you avoid too much RPsterbation or prose OOMs. Also, it makes multi-pup posts easier.

I know it's different in many cases - in the first LJ-based RPG I ever was in, I ended up playing both sides of a couple, and in my other RPG on GreatestJournal, I play brothers that have, at the moment, fallen out and are on different sides of the current main plot. Or

soultornasunder , whose two Milli!pups Námo and Nerdanel have a kid together; that is a more than casual relationship between pups of the same mun, too.

So I was wondering what other people were thinking about the relationship between their own pups, whether it was different when you have just a few like me or a whole great big lot, whether it makes a difference if they're from the same or different canons, and how that influences the tendeny to make multi-pup posts.

To further my own cogitation on the subject, I'd be greateful for your $ 0.02

Thanks!

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Well I can tell you that personally I try not to take on more then one pup from the same canon mainly because I prefer to be able to have my character play with that character rather then just having strange conversations in my head. Also I try to avoid having my pups know each other or be close but sometimes it's unavoidable. For instance I hadn't planned on Prue and Amanda being close but because of Amanda's pre-existing relationship with the other sisters that wasn't possible. On the other hand having connected pups ddoes make it easier to explain absenses and having access to another pup to help stimulate plots are nice as well.

So my three cents is that I figure it's situational or at least it is for me.

I come from a long string of World of Darkness MUSHes where using one of your characters to further the interests of another, or even just to have them trade information with one another, was heavily frowned upon. As a consequence, other than Harry and Annie Wells, I've gone to some lengths to keep my pups apart from one another. Quinn Abercromby has interacted with Gimli offscreen once or twice- mostly in the sense of 'here, I got this from that dwarf' throwaway lines. I generally don't think it's right for pups to conveniently know what other pups from the same mun know; it feels, often, like what people at World of Darkness games used to do- namely, 'Oh, yes, of course my mortal knows about vampires! Her vampire friend told her!', where vampire friend had the same mun. Or 'wel, my Kinfolk knows Kailindo, the secret werewolf martial art! Jimmy the Pooch has been training her!' where both Jimmy the Pooch and the kinfolk character were played by the same person. People who want their pups to have information, or training, or knowledge, or something else should have to have their pups work for it- both ICly and through RP'ing convincing someone else they're worthy of it. Taking advantage of OOC player connections just doesn't seem right.

I apped Annie because Annie was supposed to be an extremely minor character and something of a plot device, and because I couldn't find someone else to app her in time. I've avoided having her in the Bar at the same time as her husband, where possible.

I enjoy playing characters that know about and/or know each other.

Nerdanel was not originally apped for the purpose of having Námo's child. She'd been apped for a couple of weeks before the idea came to me. After talking it over with Ven and you OOC, a plan/plot was devised to help with the aftermath of a plot that had fallen through. It also got Maglor into the bar as well. Nerdanel and Námo knowing each other as intimately as they do have given me opportunities to advance personal plot and character development at times. They hold respect for each other, and care about each other's well being, but they feel that way more out of necessity through the child than if they had never had Gabriel. Nerdanel doesn't much like Námo, really.

Ruin and Moon know about all of my puppets because of their nature. It can get annoying, and I have to be very careful of what things they know, or else it gets metagamey. Usually, they know their name and whatever thing brought the character into their sphere of influence. But Moon and Ruin are not friends with any of my other puppets. Ruin played a big part in the lives of Nerdanel and Námo, even emotionally scarred Námo, but he doesn't really show up anymore unless I need to have something specific happen, like Path Not Taken for Mary Anne's future plot.

My final pup, Claudia, isn't really known by any of my other puppets except for Moon and Ruin (and even that is just surface knowledge), and she doesn't know any of them. I plan to keep it that way.

I've noticed a pattern as far as Milliways goes for me, now you mention it; I don't let my characters meet each other until one of them knows someone else from the other's universe. (Jane met Mark and Roger before Angel, Angel met Cimorene and Mendanbar before Morwen, that sort of thing.) Angel knows both my other current characters, but then, he'll talk to just about anyone once, so that's not a major stretch. If I want to do a double-post, it's usually Angel and one of the others talking.
The one major difference to this, and also the only time I've had two characters from the same canon in this game, was Alexi. Due to the events of canon, Angel was not happy to see her, and after her entrance avoided her quite successfully (even though she grew up quite a bit in that time). I'll even go so far as to theorize part of why I didn't give her many entrance posts is because Angel's so loud, and wouldn't let her speak up for anything.
Also, in a way, there was Plot With Rocks In - the music, through poor Imp, was swanning about driving half the bar bats, and Angel was trying to figure out how to get Mark back. But Angel and Imp have talked since then, and they get along okay (it'd be worse if the music influx had been intentional. way worse).

Circumstances change by games, of course. In the Disc RP I had the cousins-sharing-a-flat bit, and partly thanks to the nature of the setup they did most of their talking off-screen. In

otherways, I only have the one character... but it's an AU incarnation of Alexi that Angel actually likes and lets speak up, so I've been writing a lot of two-character-or-more OOMs for her lately. (It prolly doesn't help that I'm the only one poking around in that particular AU. XD)
But... yeah. Mostly my milli!characters get along well enough that they talk occasionally. I'm done rambling now.

Excluding the few times I've NPC'd Wash's family, none of my pups know of the others ICly -- even though, if the OOC circumstances were different, I would love to see some of them meet. Problem is, I've always had a really difficult time brainsplitting; if I play more than one pup at a time, my response time (which is already kind of slow under normal circumstances) can get as bad as twenty to thirty minutes between tags. That, and I usually walk away from it with a nasty headache. So because of past experience, I've already got a bit of a disinclination to RPsterbate or do multi-pup posts.

But more than that, the reason I RP is to collaborate and play with other people. If I'm regularly tagging one of my own characters with another? I may as well just write fanfic. Plus, there's also what Cam alluded to: having one of my pups gain knowledge from another feels way too much like cheating, especially if it's done offscreen.

So, yeah. In the end, it's just easier all around for me if mine don't interact. *g*

I had Connor and VH know each other - even semi-RP'd threads with the two of them - b/c it amused me, mostly. That and after the 'Save the Cat' mission, it was nearly impossible to assume they didn't know each other, plus they had a mutual friend - Nick and a mutual pseudo-enemy - Kronos. Beyond that, I don't tend to have my pups interact too much.

Harry and Bob don't count - Bob, while in Harry's possession, is essentially an 'extension' of Harry, thus they're almost not separate characters, though they get played separately from time-to-time... b/c who can resist the allure of a talking skull?

None of my pups know each other (yet - now that I think about it, the pup I'm adopting in the fall will probably have mutual friends with Veronica) and even their social circles rarely interact. None of them are from the same canon and they're all quite different from each other, which means that they all have completely different sets of rules for how I play them - and even different writing styles, to a certain extent - in my head, and it's never been that easy for me to just switch back and forth on the fly. It's like driving in first gear and fourth gear at the same time.

So I just... don't do multi-pup posts, and I don't even really like to be playing more than one character at the same time, it just kills my brain. It's crossing the streams! You can't do that without blowing something up.

My pups pretty much never interact, even in my head. I don't have that hard a time playing more than one of them at once -- I've played up to three at once without tremendous difficulty -- but getting them to talk to each other doesn't work. To the point where when someone asked me for a drabble of Simon and Andrew talking, I discovered they barely had anything to say to each other; I was reduced to having them exchange a few words about Anthy and then get distracted.

And as Phoenix says, the point of RP is collaboration.

That's it pretty much exactly, for me.

I'm just not as good at arranging it so that my characters don't have much IC reason to interact. *wry*

Sara and Grissom are from the same canon--naturally, they know each other. And they also call each other family since aspects of canon are being ignored for the sake of game harmony and my poor brain.

Celebrian knows Sara as well, since Elrond considers her a daughter of the heart. She also knows Grissom from the OOM serial killer plot when he took her and Elrond to Las Vegas to visit Sara in the hospital.

I find it helps if I let my characters know one another. *shrug*

I've long been tempted to have Knox and Lando meet, if only because Bily Dee Williams plays not just Lando but also the Harvey Dent we meet in the the first Batman film. I've also decided that's just silly.

Fact is, my pups wouldn't really hit it off. Knox would annoy Lando. He would have annoyed Barry even more. That's why I apped a pup like Knox in the first place, though.

I'm another one of those who tends to keep their characters as far apart as possible. Mostly this is because I am very lazy. *grins* Figuring out how interactions would go between any of my main characters would take work - there are good reasons why Meg and Mary might not get along, if the wrong thing was said during the conversation, and the Prince tends to annoy everyone - and it's just easier to shove them into separate corners of the sandbox as much as possible. (All right Mary has met the Prince, but it was a two-comment cameo to get his shins kicked by Turtle Wexler, so it doesn't really count.) I even get a little weirded out when other characters who know both of mine talk to one of them about the other, because of the difficulty separating the in-character response to whatever the story is from my OOC response as the player of the character being discussed.

The one exception to this, of course, is when I played Madame Giry against Meg - and while I originally considered having Madame Giry enter the bar occasionally as a character in her own right, it became much easier to have her mostly as an out-of-Milliways plot device. And that is why I will never play two characters from the same canon again. *cheerful*

In the past, some of my pups ended up interacting with one another. Usually because there was some common grounds in their canons. Also, some of my pups tend to be chatty with each other.

Dana Barrett was mostly brought in for some plottiness and interacting with Venkman, but that was only for a short time, and I knew it would be. Even then, the couple didn't always talk to each other about things, and they had to find out info second-handedly from other pups like Ray.

Played some threads with Giles and Venkman talking, and it's mostly since they present an opposite perspective to one another. But I don't have them do that as much. Venkman only knows of Draco as that blond backstabbing bastard from other pups' descriptions and accounts, and he really doesn't want to know the kid. Giles and Draco briefly met but that was for one post deal, and mostly an excuse for the kid to some well-deserved discipline and punishment via training. Scully and Venkman met, but again, really only for one post relating to plot, and they didn't get along at all. For the most part nowadays, my pups don't usually interact since multi-pup interactions tend to be ugly and headache-inducing. And the whole thing does smack of RPsterbation too often.

I sometimes like to use multi-pup posts to show that not only do my pups know one another, they don't particularly like one another. So I don't make it an opportunity for privileged cooperation so much as privilaged antagonism. *shrugs* What can I say? This amuses me.

Malcolm and Agent K get along well enough, but have little in common. Malcolm enjoys needling Wesley. And Toby snarks at all three. I once did a four-way poker thread so I could have them insult one another mercilessly in between interacting with other people's pups. I think it got the point across that they didn't get along, without danger of giving offense to anyone other than myself.

That poker thread was love. *snicker*

Thanks! I had fun with it (http://community.livejournal.com/milliways_bar/9940012.html). =)

Two of my main chars are in similar social circles- Svava and Wellard know quite a few of the same people. Have they met? Yep- but it was quite handwaved. (I was able to figure he'd be quite in fearful awe of Svava, and she would be quietly bemused by Wellard, and then they didn't have to interact much beyond that.) They have even been together in the same plot- but thankfully I had many other wonderful chars to act as a buffer between them.

Like Cam, I'm also used to WoD settings, and there it is rather considered twinkery to have most of your chars be close and interact. (Not saying its right or wrong, just what I "grew up with" in my begining years RPing.) Here, given that Svava was engaged to, and then married, Archie Kennedy, who was a crewmate to Wellard, having them not ever meet and sort of interact would have been odd, so I rather had to figure out a way to balance that out.

So, they met, and are friendly enough- and that is about it. My other chars thankfully do not run in quite so similar circles, so they haven't bumped into each other so far.

Two of mine are from the same canon and are squadronmates and possibly even friends (depending, I think, on which of them you ask), so it's inevitable that they should thread a little. I really don't like RPsterbating, though, so when Plourr entered, I just tagged in with Tycho on another pup's conversation with her, so it wasn't entirely me talking to myself. If things were different (which is a euphemism for, if someone else were playing one of them, though I'd never want to give either up), I would pretty gleefully thread them all the time. As is, the arguing they tend to do makes my brain hurt, and I've thrown them in for multi-pup posts together only once or twice, and have never threaded just the two of them.

When apps reopen, I'm apping two more characters from the same canon, one of whom is basically the canonical Big Bad and has tortured one of mine, and was actually killed by another. All four characters know each other in canon. The jury's still out on whether or not my head is going to survive. But really, when their voices get seriously into my head, I'll app them. I'll worry a little about avoiding RPsterbating as much as possible, and how I'm going to keep them all separate, but I'll app them.

Barring some really strange and unforseen turn of events, Riley and Father Mulcahy are never meeting each other or any of the others. I don't really see the point of playing two of my pups who aren't from the same canon together when there are so many awesome pups played by other muns to interact with.

Mark and Joanne know each other for obvious reasons. Let me tell you, however, having two people in your head who've dated the same woman can be really strange sometimes.

Mark and Val know each other, only because Angel introduced them once.

Qui-Gon knows Val because it's hard not to know the wife of a Jedi.

Biggs knows of Val, but they've mainly talked off-screen.

Biggs also knows of Mark, mainly because Mark hangs around and fanboys the pilots.

Most of them are cheerful aquaintances and I handwavey them off-screen. *shrugs* I might at some point RPsterbate them all, but not just yet.

My pups tend not to interact with each other ICly. They certainly don't talk to each other in my head, and I've played characters who have strong ties to each other. Best example of this is Cywyllog and Melou, who are mother and son. They met all of once in the bar and it was a fairly difficult thread for me to do. I simply suck at rpsterbation.

I also have to say I'm one who is perhaps more interested in interacting with other characters, so I'm sort of glad my own tend to stay separate. It's not that I think it's better this way, it's just the way it's worked out for me, and it's the way I like it.

Several of mine know each other (Liam and Kevin are kind of brothers-in-law, Sharpe got recruited to the Antar war by a third-party pup whose mun didn't know at the time that I played Michael Guerin as well, Michael and Maria are married...) but they rarely interact on-screen, without someone I don't play being there.

I just don't have fun RPsterbating.

I play my own daughter. Or, well, Random and Trillian, who actually are easily integrated in one location and played together. Trillian and Max are also close, which was another plot-neccessitated accident that ended up working for me.

Aside from that ... well, Slack and Sheila know each other simply because one is Ash's Sister Figure and the other is his fiancee. Kit was at Max's wedding, but because he went with Nita and Gavroche, not because they actually know each other.

Nicole and Campbell ... same universe, but no real connection.

(I'm still amused at the multi-pup post's becoming a thing of convenience, as its origin was when I had 18 characters, and put them all in one post to see if I was even capable of doing it -- it was a point of "come torture Rue!" Evolution of things, man.)

I try to have my characters not know each other.

...Mind, by and large I utterly fail at this, because my three main characters -- Will, River, and Alain -- have all had close mutual friends. But by and large they weren't in the bar at the same time, at least Millitime-wise, and if they had to be in the same place for a plot usually lots of distracting stuff was happening.

And for River and Regan, well, they obviously know each other. *wry* But it's still awkward between them. And, threadwise, if they're together it's with at least one or two other people around to help me thread, and/or I ficstyle or offscreen a lot of it.

Because I suck at RPsterbation.

But I try to keep mine separate if I can, because then I don't have to figure out how they get along and run the risk of threading them together. So far, though, ICness has meant that they've had to at least end up in the same loose group.

The Black Rider and Yrael know each other and are... er... "friends," but only because Alana used to play the Black Rider before she passed him to me. Since then, they haven't talked, but maybe they should.

:D

Most of my characters are at best peripherally acquainted based on their "social circles," for lack of a better term. Sometimes this leads to an interesting experience on my part, because it's less interesting and more difficult for me to play my own characters against each other.

The best and most recent example of this that I have would be Moiraine Sedai v. the White Rider. There is no way that Moiraine would NOT be involved IC in fighting the Dark-- especially given her association with Merriman Lyon and Will Stanton, and her very significant interest in Bran Davies. Conversely, the second that Blodwen realized IC that Moiraine was mortal and therefore vulnerable in a way that Merriman and Will were not, she naturally became more of a target.

So I shrieked for help and made sure that their interactions always took place with at least a third party present. :) And that's pretty much formed my standard mode -- make sure there's someone else around for those times when it's unavoidable, as best I can.

Karen and Charlie are from the same canon and are in-laws, and Charlie's married to Bobby's partner, so that's three right there that would know each other no matter who played them. Jack and Chris were friends in the game they originated in and I decided to keep that for convenience's sake.

Having Charlie and Jack friends is also mostly a matter of convenience--for when Charlie needs somebody to borrow money from, mostly. Though I did amuse myself after I gave Jack a facelift with some references to the Dom and Billy show, because I am a silly fangirl.

The only odd men out are Sweet and Boromir, and both Jack and Charlie have mentioned knowing him though I've not written a conversation between them. As for Sweet, he's been too busy being a chicken to make friends.

I don't mind RPsterbation much--sometimes it's the only way I can accomplish what I want to for plot--but it's not that interesting, really. The fun of RP is not knowing what's coming next.

The only characters I have who know each other are Nita and Carmela, because they're good friends in canon -- and that's the only time I've apped someone for the relationship they would have with one of my existing pups (I think I had some thought of 'Mela and Nita playing cards together in the bar, which has yet to happen). But I also apped 'Mela so I'd have a cracky, anti-angst character, so.

As for the rest of my pups? I have to keep Nita away from all of them because she's a walking canon-puncture (as much as I would love to see Nita meet Charles Wallace, because her head would asplode of fangirl); Charles is similar.

Mostly, though, RPsterbation just seems complicated. I only talk to myself in real life. ^.^

I've read all these comments with interest because I only have one character in Milliways. I had two briefly but dropped the other for fear of the canon police when I realised I didn't have the exhaustive knowledge of his canon that I would need.

Elsewhere I have had more characters and see nothing at all wrong with writing them together - but that's because I see what I'm doing more as story writing that acting. I suppose it's best expressed by saying that the plot is the important thing, the characters, whoever they are, whoever they belong to, just further it.

I find the term RPsturbation deeply judgemental and derogatory.

*headtilts* Why?

I'm honestly curious, is all, because I've never seen it that way. For me, it's a mildly amusing play on words that somehow caught on, and I use it because it's succinct and everybody gets what I mean by it. Which is not meant to say that you should see it my way instead of yours, or anything like that; I'm just curious why you find it offensive.

I suppose partly it's due to how one is used to hearing words used.

'Wank' for instance, which means to masturbate in the UK, is applied to the sort of behaviour that all RPers find offensive. One would not willingly admit to being an RP wanker. RPsturbation, meaning to play with oneself rather than other people, therefore takes on the same kind of offensive, silly, furtive meaning. You'll see from some of the comments above that it is frowned upon in some circles - and when they frown, they REALLY frown. I would be willing to bet that the term was coined in those circles as an extension of 'wank' and was used to denote someone who was a poor, inadequate or worthless player just as British men use the term 'wanker' to denote a man who is so pathetic he can't get a girlfriend.

Basically it all comes down to language.

In game I feel that, like with real masturbation, if it gets the job done or that's you you've got you might as well enjoy it.

I suppose since I'm the example presented of a one mun, two character interraction post I should weigh in on the subject at hand...

Personally I've got no objections to my characters mingling with each other, and anyone who's paid any attention to any of my characters will note that two of my pups [Strength and Wheel to be precise] are invariably seen together—where one is, the other is bound to be nearby. This isn't a hard and fast rule though; they'll fly solo now and then, but generally they tend to stick together, which is probably due to them both being tarot cards and the old adage of birds of a feather flocking together. And that's the only reason they hang together at all.

I'm willing to do it, and have done it in the past [I've been in a few HP games and have played both Lestrange brothers without too much hassle].

The only problem I have regarding single mun, multi pup posts is the fact that it gets boring after a while. The creative well seems to run dry faster when you're playing by yourself than you are with others, and I'd wager that's more to do with you knowing your characters best, which means you don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out how the interractions will go—you've rehearsed it in your head so many times you start to think everyone knows what's on your mind.

It's so much more fun to play with a pup belonging to someone else because you can't read their minds, and even if you know the pup and their canon forwards and backwards there's still something to be said about being unable to fully predict what the other player's going to do.

Individual interpretations of canon and whatnot.

PS: Since Rabastan and Strahan are the examples I would like to say that their interraction was something I'd been planning for at least a month or two now. Although it started on a whim my main concern was in figuring out what kind of catalyst would bring both men together. The Armageddon Plot supplied that catalyst, and so now the two have met and are speaking with each other, and although I did not write an OOM where the two told each other about their worlds I did hint it at the end of their first meeting (http://community.livejournal.com/milliways_bar/14060018.html?thread=576453106#t576453106) that they did have such a conversation, so yes, I can have both men knowing something about each other and their worlds, because of that handwaved conversation that happened-but-wasn't-written-about [I am notoriously impatient, as those who know me well can attest to].

...I think I've rambled enough now, and looking at all this I can see that I've gone from giving my two cents' worth to approximately twenty... ¬.¬!

Oh dear, mine have all known each other. Oops. I don't RPsturbate often, but I certainly have. Tom and Ingress have had threads, as well as Tom and Dumbledore. Usually when I do that, I've written out the dialogue ahead of time, and since I've taken to writing tags in a traditional style, it's really easy for me do so. The threads I've done this for have tended to be really important threads, though.

To be fair, Ingress was not mine at first. I adopted her in 12/04, but I had been writing for her (and for Door) in ficlets for some time. Her voice is so strong in my head, that I have no trouble playing her and Tom at the same time. I don't know - I guess I like having the interaction in my head, because I dream worlds, man.

When I was in high school, I was active in acting tournaments in which I'd perform dramatic interpretations - you'd distinctly act out however many characters (usually no more then three) were in the scene of the play, using different lines of sight, different voices and gestures, etc. I liked doing it, and I was pretty good at it. This is really not that different. ;)

I blame the interactions my pups have with each other on OOCly liking to RP with certain muns. I see my friends online, I want to play with them, and I haven't got our usual characters, so we break out other characters. That is why Cera ended up being so closely tied in with Mel - because Mel was out of bar and I was playing Cera against Lilly and Alanna in Mel's stead. She was hried on to Security by Alanna, moved herself into Lilly's suite, and by the time Mel came back, there was Cera having taken over.
The only time I handwave my pups talking off screen, it's with Cera and Mel, because they do overlap in friend circles. And Cera's almost a pet/child of Mel's these days.

Angua and Mel know each other sort of, because I got bored once and had them meet, but they don't know each other very well. It wasn't all that fun. I don't do that any more. But because I like to play with Bing, one of Angua's best friends in bar is the same person Jocasta crushes on, and the brother of Mel's boyfriend. Oops?
For the same reason, another of Angua's best friends is the husband of one of Jocasta's friends and the mentor of another. The circles are formed by my preference to RP with my friends.

In general, the characters I have from the same canon don't need to interact much, because they move in different circles. I took up Death after dropping Susan. Walter and Christine!!!!! never really had more than one major thread together in bar. My three currently active Discworld characters have no canonical reason to talk. Angua, Jocasta and Death all have very different and separate lives.

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I was pondering...

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