DE: Now drink this bottle of whiskey and don't give in to hate

[bjornwilde]

So last night i was listening to Dropkick Murpheys, which reminded me of an old favorite, the Jedi Drinking Song and how I once thought of playing the drunken jedi for laughs before remembering that I'm not really good with long term humor/crack.

With this in mind, what sort of challenges have you faced in portraying characters? Have you realized there are certain types you just can't write, no matter how much you love them? Or are there certain elements that are more challenging to the character that aren't so obvious? Things such as accents or modes of body language?

Alternately, what are some of you favorite filk or nerd rock songs?

Comments

[sdelmonte]

Funny you should mention challenges. As many of you know, I have playing Howard Stark for a while now. And I was thrilled that he was getting more canon on Agent Carter. Thrilled until we meet him again. Turns out that my interpretation of Howard as being less like his son and more like the character we glimpse in flashback in the first two Iron Man films is completely wrong now. Howard is, quite frankly, an a-hole. (Which is the one thing I am not liking on Agent Carter. His behavior is both reckless and stupid and makes very little sense so far.) So my challenge in a month or so might be to reconcile my nicer version and the canon version. Assuming I don't just drop him.

Never mind that the backstory he got is totally different than Millicanon. I can fudge that, though I really don't want to. But I have liked playing Howard and need to give where to go next a lot of thought. And given the hint that Howard might be Jewish, I might want to play with that.

PS: Am pondering trying out Jarvis, though. He's much closer to my usual type. And like me, he's married to a Jewish woman who is a great cook.

Also, my current favorite filk song is Suprema Lex by Ookla the Mok.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNK91a8SooQ

[i_am_your_host]

Perhaps Howard mellows when he gets older and has a son? (Still drinks heavily and not exactly Dad of the Year, though.)

[bjornwilde]

Or maybe this FUBARed situation makes him really look at his life and he changes a few things to become more like your Stark?

[never_shall_yield]

I can't write humour. I'm not funny, and I find it hard to sustain a comedic character's voice over any length of time. I can't write shallow characters, mainly because they bore me. There are plenty that I love watching - I want Barney Stinson in-bar! (wasn't he around once?) - but I could never play him for that reason.

Body language etc, I'm usually fine with in the beginning, because I just describe what's going on. I sometimes get frustrated that I can't stress just how detached and silent Valjean is sometimes, or how Gene has all this violence bubbling just underneath the surface, because every tag would be 500 words long, with very little dialogue. So I try to just refer to stuff as I go, and hope the general impression is coming off.

And then of course, there's some next level layers of pain with some characters, and I love that! But it makes them challenging to be around other people sometimes, and they require OOMs, and they're not always sociable. So that can be awkward when I really want to play them, and they're just not in the mood.

[camwyn]

We did have a Barney Stinson for a while. I remember him interacting with Ironhide.

[sunbaked_baker]

The only challenge I can think of at the moment is that the sheer immensity of Sunshine's rambling internal narration in canon is something I cannot hope to match (though I sometimes make a stab at it). ^_^

[bjornwilde]

As I mentioned before, I am not good with long term crack/humor. I am good with instances or accidental humor but I cannot maintain the crack.

Accents can be problematic for me. I remember this was one of the challenges I had with Ben Grimm. I ultimately made a rule to drop the g at the end of words as a baseline and went from there, which worked rather well. Before that I was all over the place with writing his Yancy Street dialect.

As to filk songs, I'm mostly new to the genre but I love Kirby Krackle (especially One of the Guys) and Adam WarRock (here's his Star-Lord for reference).

And dang it I'm missing Ben now.

[protect_and_survey]

Fight scenes. How do they work, and not feel like the most clunky things ever? Seriously? And I agree, prolonged crack is hard - that's why I gave up Hon Rosie in the end, because hares have a few solid gag lines and then... well, then they're supposed to be scary but it's hard for a hare to be scary in this bar. Even a well armed and not-entirely-sane one.

[death_gone_mad]

Hmmm... I think that my ace-ish nature makes romance and sex scenes kinda... off? Way off? I dunno, I have found out people were flirting with me sometimes way after they got frustrated with my obliviousness.

So yeah, flirting is... I can't.

Luckily I play a goddess who may be sexual, but is so messed up in the head that anything romantic with her is going to be way messed up anyhow. And my other is a fairy from a fairy species that seems to have some things in common with insects, maybe even social insects. Who even knows how Zanaris fairy sex and romance works?

[student_of_impossibility]

OH MAN Jedi Drinking Song. Do you know the Prequel Jedi Drinking Song? ...Ahem. I'll do a tag later with ~MUSIC~ things.

To me, crack is random, senseless, weird, supposed-to-be-funny, makes-you-laugh-uncomfortably. I can't do crack, I cannot play cracky characters, and I tend to hate it and ~Wacky Hijinx~ of a certain type.

Humor? I love humor. I try never to write an angsty scene without at least one good quip or smile coming out of it, even as it hits hard in the feels. I entirely believe in writing snarky banter in serious situations, and making hilarious and satisfying things happen in what would otherwise be all business. The reverse is also true: I try to use banter to enforce serious points, and make comic scenes move forward or have meaning.

So I can't play cracky characters, or ones without a sense of humor--although sardonic and subtle is fantastic fun. I'm also honestly not good at playing truly evil characters, or true antagonists. I like some who may be treacherous but have reasons (Kratos Aurion of Tales of Symphonia springs to mind). I also have trouble writing people who don't over-think things in some ways. There are exceptions to the over-thinking rule--Eriond, maybe one day Keladry of Mindelan, others--but I get compulsive.

Honestly, other than my answer to characteristics all my pups share, I'm not 100% sure what my blocks are. I have several worlds I love deeply but have never felt anyone sure enough to play from despite that--Brandon Sanderson, Max Gladstone, Kingdom Hearts, The Wire, others. I don't entirely know why. I always want to see people play them, but can't myself.

Oh. Except that I really can't play characters sit around or do nothing but angst. I go for the proactive types.

[bjornwilde]

Do you know the Prequel Jedi Drinking Song?

No, I didn't but I do now thanks to the wonder of Google. = ]

[runningred]

I've spent all week writing job applications so I have no brain left to answer questions.

Instead, have filk! The USS Making Shit Up

[aberration]

I can have trouble with Asami sometimes, because she talks and acts like a healthy, well-adjusted, confident, and friendly person, and I'm terrible at writing that. Socially stunted weirdos, sure! Pleasant, kind people –wtf. How do human beings act this way????? It is a mystery. And it's sometimes a problem when she's being an engineer – I can fake it pretty well with her driving, because as much as I hate driving, I at least understand it. But things like construction and design, I end up doing a lot of research and feel no more qualified to do the kind of writing I'd like to do for her than when I started. Though I tend to plow through anyway.

I don't have that trouble with Will, but I sometimes feel awkward with him when it comes to how he's acting physically, as I feel like I tend to write the same five things over and over. He touches his forehead! He looks away! He walks away! He looks back! Whatever. And I feel like there's only so much I can do to … vary up on writing that, at times I feel more like I'm directing an actor than writing a scene. On the other hand, I feel an intense need to know exactly how he's moving and what he's looking at all the time, and that this needs to be communicated, especially as he's so reticent. So… I'm sorry if it gets repetitive?

Also, writing him can be really emotionally taxing, and more than any other character I've ever had he can be more prone to – for lack of another way putting this, blue-screen-of-deathing out on me, and I have to push him into dealing, because he can't do that in the actual tag. He does also have WAY more silent tags than the rest of mine, which is pretty much in keeping with his character, but also makes me feel bad as a player. I'm sorry!!!

And I tend to be kind of sarcastic and jokey, but with Will – his canon can actually be pretty funny, but it sort of has to be in specific ways, and to really keep with the tone of the character I feel like I need to respect that. So my avenues to be humorous with him are narrower and require more cleverness on my part than I necessarily feel I'm capable of.

[i_am_your_host]

There are only so many ways I can describe the Master of Ceremonies as moving or smiling like a cat. But I try anyway!

The most difficult thing about him though is that he has ZERO backstory. (And zero story, for that matter.) I've made up everything about his past, which I sometimes have to come up with on the spot (or evade) whenever another character asks him a question. The only scrap of non-canonical information that Alan Cumming has ever provided was that Emcee might have been a kid from the streets who could dance and sing a little, basically a "glorified rent boy." He doesn't even think about what his personality is like when he's offstage. So that's all been up to me, and while it's been lots of fun bringing my own interpretation to him, I have to set my own parameters in order to keep him in character, and I'm not always sure it works. I get burned out on him often, too, because he can be anything at any time with anybody, and I have to keep up.

[runningred]

Gotta say, I adore Emcee and I love threading with him and you. Yes, he tries to be anything to anyone but I guess because Jay sometimes sees behind that mask, I have a deep affection for the battered, world weary and utterly wonderful person underneath.

I can't express how much of a pleasure it is to play with you!

[athelstanthescribe]

What Munnin said. (And if you're feeling burned out, that last thread of ours is at a decent fade point).

[genarti]

Slapstick or silliness in which my character is not either the dry foil for the humor or taking the whole thing in cheerful earnest. I have a very hard time writing chattery characters, too, especially if the chattering isn't a social script.

This is less RP and more my own media consumption habits, but I've learned the hard way that I am no good at keeping up with an open canon, let alone playing a character from it. Closed canons for me, thanks, or at the very least ones that update infrequently and in manageable chunks. (The MCU, for example, I can just about handle.)

Challenges in terms of playing characters I've otherwise had success with: I play a lot of fairly reserved people, and it can be difficult to actually start up a conversation with other people. (This is one reason why I ended up dropping Riza Hawkeye: I just didn't have the time to play out the incredibly gradual pace of her opening up her guard to anyone ever about anything, and it was frustrating to play her with that guard always, always up.) I do a lot of leaning sometimes on an EP with a thread hook, or on the "[character] just happens to be passing right next to your table" thing.

As Write said, body language and physicality. I try to mention that a lot, as a general RP thing (and a general writing thing), but I also try to not constantly harp on the same things at length. And some things, especially gestures, are just difficult to describe even when I have a clear mental image of it (and I nearly always do.) So that's a balance!

[bjornwilde]

...I am no good at keeping up with an open canon

I hear you there. I learned the hard way with Ben Grimm to stay at least two story arcs behind current publications.

[genarti]

Ahaha, yeah. There's a reason Thor is still hanging out in between his movies.

...Okay, part of that reason is that I just haven't gotten off my duff to push him up through Avengers. But I definitely didn't want to do that before I knew how Thor 2 was going to go down!