Daily Entertainment: Sleepy Saturday Edition!

[damncompass]

Good morning, Milliways! (even though it's barely still morning here in frigid Connecticut)

Because it's one of those days, and it came up in a conversation elsewhere, let me ask you all:

Character Types! Do you as a mun have a character type that you usually play? Is there some thread that connects your characters, either via personality or something else? If you don't know, post and let other people decide!

Comments

[chanter1944]

I'm pretty sure most other muns will agree that my characters tend to be competent in one field or another, fairly quiet (don't ask me why, as I never shut my trap) and multilingual with a tendency to code switch all the dang time.

[alas_a_llama]

Heaven knows I have no type at all. *sage*

(I'm actually not entirely sure. There are certainly threads that connect several of my characters - Wan and Yugo are quite alike, and Atton's a fair bit like them too; Sherral and Teddy are pretty similar, and Leo Fudou, when I played him, was not dissimilar. But I'm not sure if there's a connecting thread for all my characters.)

[jackdaws_master]

I did a basic census of the jobs and genders and such of as many pups as I could remember playing on LJ and Dreamwidth back in October....

Very few of the pups I play are villains in their canon. Most of them are male. The majority are the supporting characters of their canons rather than the protagonist or antagonists. A lot of them are military or police, with the scale heavily weighted towards sergeants and corporals; the ones who aren't non-coms are at the top end of their command structures. A high percentage of my pups are non-humans. With the exception of Detritus prior to receiving his cooling helmet, all of them are extremely intelligent characters (Grimlock may seem like an exception, but the version I play has mental problems due to cerebrator damage that Ratchet can't fix- him not stupid, him have brain injury with lifelong sequelae, as you squishies put it).

Oh, and it's not uncommon at all for pups of mine to either have some form of canonical communication weirdness (Bumblebee, Vergil, Gordon's severe lack of talking, Mordin, Grimlock) or be best described as a killer geek, or both.

[dejah_thoris]

re: Communication weirdness: Shephard's preternatural ability to swear.

[cameoflage]

It doesn't seem to extend to my OCs, but with fandom characters (i.e. anyone likely to end up at Milliways) the trend appears to be spooky nonhumans (or questionably-humans) from web media.

I'm including characters I didn't actually app but did make journals for, like Zombie, Zimmy & Gamma, and Jack Skellington, to get a better sample size on this. (Actually I've considered apping Zombie after all, but I think I need more test runs first, and I doubt I need to add a third pup in my current dry spell.)

[not_my_sandbox]

I seem to play god haters, but that might just be canon's fault. Yes, even Amascut, a goddess herself, hates gods, but it is more she hates other gods than the concept of gods and religion itself. She's not as bad as Guthix, who was Fairy Fixit's god (or maybe friend, who knows how deep the fairies' understanding of Guthix's philosophy is). Hated religion itself and let himself be killed to prove the point RELIGION IS BAD STOP WORSHIPING ME GUYS. Well, it's more subtle than that, but, well, his life was tragic and full of hissyfits as a result.

I also seem to play females. Or at least characters that that aren't 100% male. Evil Chicken shifted from an obvious rooster that laid eggs like a hen to a chicken of ambiguous gender. Well... now that I think of it, that isn't much of a shift. It is just the addition of pronoun confusion to the mix.

I haven't (seriously) played anyone human either. Amascut doesn't count since she only pretends to be human.

[alexiscartwheel]

The only thing I've really come up with that connects all three of mine (Lady Mary Crawley, Carol Danvers, Stiles Stilinski) on a personality level is that they're all smart with a tendency to sass people. Narrative wise, they're all basically on the side of good, to whatever degree that's applicable.

[adiva_calandia]

BADASS NORMALS. Badass normals are my biggest narrative kink, hands-down. (When I briefly sandboxed Lorna Bucket from "A Good Man Goes to War" at least one person commented saying that she knew that was going to be my favorite character.) Carmela, Tom, Eustace Scrubb, Ann Darrow -- all aggressively normal people in fantastic situations, often surrounded by people or entities much more powerful than them. (The list extends when I start counting sandbox characters, but let's not or we'll be here all day.)

Relatedly, I feel like I end up playing a lot of paladins: Nita, Charles Wallace, Carmela and Eustace again. I am definitely drawn to characters who are firmly on the side of Good and Light.

I also apparently have a fondness for characters, particularly women, whose power and agency lies primarily in their wits and their ability to use politics or social scripts to their advantage: Guinevere, Kate Percy, Kim to a certain extent. (And the Queen of Faerie and Sophie von Teschen when I played both of them for a hot second each.)

And then there's Epimetheus, and Henry Fitzroy, who I guess are just weird. (Actually, I could maybe slot Epimetheus into the badass normal category, given that he's not terribly powerful compared to the rest of his family. But he is still a god, so that seems a little disingenuous.)

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

The last time we did a D&D alignment meme, I was amused to realize most of mine are chaotic good. (I think the Ice King is more on the neutral side of things, though.) They want to do the right thing, but they'll do it their way and for their own reasons. (Whenever someone aligns Steve with Lawful Good, I want to remind them the entire plot of Captain America was "Steve, don't do the thing." "I'm going to do the thing!")

I also like either normals (Bilbo, Cecil until we're told otherwise, Jack Benjamin) or magic users (Merlin, Lydia, the Ice King). Playing a god or a superhero happens, but they don't fill my roster. (And I just realized I'm not sure where the new kid you all will meet soon falls on this spectrum. Hmm...)

And I like characters with a measure of wit. Sass is fun!

[anthologia]

OH OH OH we should totally talk, because I apped Allie Pennington from Avalon High in this round, and she's the reincarnation of Arthur. And, judging from her interactions in memes and things, she'll totally want to collect Merlin into her Harem o' Merlins meet him. :D?

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

Sure! Drop me a line when you do an EP and they can talk.

[road_to_calvary]

No, none at all, what are you talking about?



…OK, not true. I seem to tend towards the flawed good guys, these days. Assholes with a heart of gold, sort of thing. Also, lawmen seem to feature quite heavily. I often feel like I want a pup with superpowers, but they never seem to stick. I seem to get more longevity out of normal guys with a high skill set. I'd say Banner was the exception, but he never wants to use his power, so he's hardly normal.

Valjean's the biggest exception of all the pups I've ever played, I think. His skill set is his personality, rather than a job - though having said that, he does have a lot of talents I just haven't mentioned in the bar yet. Also, he's the only one who's flaws are almost entirely imagined by himself. But then, internal conflict is probably the major thing connecting all my guys.

Apart from the fact that they are all guys, always. I should probably app a woman some time, for variety.

[bjornwilde]

I think I tend to aim for secondary hero/protagonists for my narrative kink (*love* that phrase, Adiva). They also seem to have a few levels in angst as well as being mostly good or noble; sometimes more than is healthy for them (I'm looking at you, Mulan).

I've tried my hand at bad or less noble pups and it's always felt awkward, Jafar being my latest. I love bad guys in canons but I never seem to be able to pull them off.

For a while I had a strong comic book kink as well though I've drifted off, mostly on purpose, to get some variety.

[bjornwilde]

Oh, and I'd be curious to see what others thought my common character type was. = ]

[minkhollow]

I have a preponderance of Hufflepuffs.

Previous trends have included people who know a shitton more about computers than I do (Carl, Cosmo, Claudia) and teenage boys or men who still act like teenage boys (Carl, Regulus (who was elsegame at the time), Larry).

When I have Bad Guys, they tend to have some deeper reason for aligning themselves with that camp (Cata, Sam, Moist, Conflict Diamond). Cosmo's the closest I've ever gotten to a straight-up Villain, but even he had his reasons. they were rather fucked-up reasons, but he had them.

[yakalskovich]

My female characters are usually older ladies and/or have unusual powers. Margolotta is probably the most archetypical of them all. My male characters are a tad more varied.

[anthologia]

Right, so. I realized years ago that I tend to take on characters who are a bit fucked up and then take them through the painfully slow and difficult journey of 'getting better'. Bart Allen, Alex Rider (well, I've tried, anyway - that's a hard one), Todd Anderson, and I have a Br(y)ce Banner elsewhere. Then there are the sweethearts: Phillipa Cobb (also has some issues, but mostly well-adjusted), Allie Pennington (largely well-adjsuted aside from the pressure of bringing about a new golden age, crossing fingers for her acceptance), Rose Zellar.

[ceitfianna]

I tend towards if not badass normals than secondary characters who don't see themselves as gifted as the rest of their canon. That's not actually true but its their perception and the one I plan to app this month fits that. So even though Sameth is incredibly rare in his canon as being the first Wallmaker in a few centuries, in his mind, he's not anywhere near as special as Lirael.

Demeter is kind of between these two types as she's one of the twelve gods of Olympus but doesn't feature as prominently and doesn't insert herself into as many stories as other gods do. She doesn't play a part in the Trojan War for instance.

The few I have that are actual main characters tend to be compassionate and not the classic type of heroes. Charles' strength comes from his kindness and empathy and Jane's from her wit and perception.

Then I have my outliers who are truly my escape valves where their strength is still their understanding of people and wit, but loose on morals. Moist is like this and the Pirate King.

So looking over, I like characters who have an understanding of perception or have a different perception of themselves than others. Also I like characters who are loyal and kind.

[aberration]

- I prefer women. Not exclusively, as I've played a lot of dudes, too, but I ... have more women characters.

- And an episode that definitely illustrates some of my character choices is that time I was walking around NYC dressed up as Marceline and was best able to keep my head up doing it by putting M.I.A.'s "Bad Girls" on my headphones.

- I think I have a narrative kink for pragmatic characters, but their moral centers tend to vary from "so bright and full that while they might flirt with doing shady things, they'll usually feel pretty bad about it" to... entirely displaced. On a scale it would probably go Leslie, Hiccup, Katara, Asami, Manny, Elle, Marceline.

- All of my characters have father issues in some form, though I feel like that's at least in part the nature of canons. There are just... a lot of characters with father issue in some form.

Other than that, I've never been very good at picking up much in terms of a connection among my characters. I can see there are types I don't tend to go for a much, but in terms of something that connects the ones I do go for, I can't think of that much that encompasses all of them.

[splash_of_blue]

I was actually talking about this with Cass last night!

Overall, there are two main themes with my characters: they're all determinators, and they all adore the Viewing Window. They live for the possible - which is what the Viewing Window represents - and they're practical: there's no point in being scared of something that will always happen anyway.

With regards to my female characters, whether they're OCs or fandom, their link is that they're feminine but never weak; girly, but not stupid or fragile. So you get Molly, who'll rock the Barbie-pink til she dies but is the most physically powerful and assertive of any of my characters; Victoria, who's most badass in canon when she's dressed up to the nines in a beautiful white dress; Martha, who's pretty and tiny and tough as hell, Edna Mode the fashion designer; and Snow Leopard Woman who's basically a mother-goddess/spirit.