DE: Insert witty title here

[bjornwilde]

Lots of great meta questions this week! To close it off, one more.

When you are thinking of a new voice, what criteria do you use to decide if they are a good choice?

[Editing the original topic to be more open.]

Comments

[bjornwilde]

I need simple for my life and so I rank the potential with three categories; character, setting, and story. Character is the pup's personality and such, who they are as a person. Setting is the world or time the character lives in, and story is their story (obviously).

I've found if character isn't in the top two ranks, I likely need to reconsider. I may love the setting and the story, but I need vibrant personalities to push me to play.

[have_no_mercy]

I once played a character whose canon I had not seen and apped them based on what I could find on Wiki. So!

Generally, if I can hear their voice in my head, not just saying lines from canon, but saying other things I think would be their reactions based on canon. I also have to be able to understand their motivations without necessarily making excuses for them. If those two things happen, I'm doomed. See: Kylo Ren.

[bjornwilde]

That is a great distinction, hearing more than canon.

[2goodarms]

I have a couple things I keep in mind:

1) Will they actually talk to and/or interact with other people? Sometimes, I'll look at a character and go MY INTROVERT BRETHREN, LET ME LOVE YOU -- but if all they're going to do is sit in a corner with a laptop when they get to the bar, that's no fun for anyone.

2) If the answer to #1 is "no," will they at least interact with the setting in an interesting way? The two characters I play the most (Curtis and Gaeta) have their quiet moments, but they're also from worlds that are radically different from the one presented in Milliways. Not just in a magic bar, exploding universe, fish-in-the-fireplace way, either; they're from worlds where something as simple as fresh food and unfrozen ground is a freakin' miracle.

3) Are there long-term play possibilities here? Sometimes, that's as easy as bringing in a character from early in canon. I did that with Gaeta, and I plan to do it with my newest once he's approved, too. But if that's not possible -- if, for instance, I'd brought in Curtis from the middle of the train, it would've destroyed the whole point of the movie -- then I need to be extra-certain I can get a lot of mileage out of #1 and #2.

Since we're not a plot-heavy game, we've gotta generate our own momentum on a character-by-character basis, and those guidelines give me the best shot of keeping that momentum going. Occasionally, things go splat anyway, but they get me pointed in the right direction, at least!

[harryhotspur]

Basically 100% ditto to all of these. In my early app cycles (all those... less than 6 months ago...) I didn't always think through these clearly enough because I was stuck on YAY I LOVE THIS CHARACTER aaaand it was silly of me.

[bjornwilde]

I still fall into "I LOVE THIS CHARACTER".

[2goodarms]

Hah, yeah, I have been so guilty of YAY I LOVE THIS CHARACTER in the past. It took some time to figure out what would work around here! And it left a loooot of deleted journals in my wake.

[bjornwilde]

#2 has been a deal breaker for me before. There's this super hero in a zombie apocalypse I love, but a vital plot point is scarce resources. Suddenly having access to Bar would change the story, even is all he did was bring antibiotics and other medicines back with him, and he wouldn't be the type to not try and bring something back with him.

[2goodarms]

Yeah, I had a similar thing happen with Gaeta. He brought back a handful of supplies early on, but eventually, I had to write around why he wasn't doing it 24/7. I decided to appeal to his sense of fairness: if he couldn't distribute supplies to everyone, then he wasn't going to do it at all, and "I can't put thirty-five thousand people on my tab," as he explained it once.

Curtis, on the other hand? There's only like a thousand people in the Tail, maybe. He would've immediately gone RIGHT, FOLLOW ME, WE ALL LIVE IN A MAGIC BAR NOW if I'd brought him in at any point pre-death.

[bjornwilde]

Curtis' answer is pretty close to this canon (Ex-Heroes). In the first book they have something like 1-2,00 people living in a hollywood studio they've fortified.

But I like Gaeta's realization!

[sunbaked_baker]

When I'm thinking of a new pup, strength of personality is key. If the character doesn't have a defined 'voice,' there's nothing to latch onto for RP, and there'd be no way of really knowing how they'd react, move forward, and grow as a person if there's not really much there to begin with. I tend to point at Sunshine's canon as a great example, because Rae's inner narration gives you so much of her character without her having to spell it out for you. The way the story is told shows you the character of the storyteller.

World building in their canon is also important to me when looking at a new voice. To know a a character well enough to take them out of their element, you have to know the element they're coming from pretty well, too. To put them in new situations and know how they'll react, you have to have an understanding of where they're coming from, the forces in their world that would have shaped them. The history, biases, and conflicts of their world affect who the character is, the values they hold and the way they think. To broaden their horizons, you have to know where their horizons are in the first place.

[bjornwilde]

Very good points. Understanding where they are coming from is very important. A trick, at least for me, is not getting bogged down in those details.

[sdelmonte]

I have many criteria, but I don't have time to list them all. But the biggest one of late is trying to deal with a character who has a ton of canon. I would love to app Hercule Poirot, but there are so many books set in so many different years that it would be unwieldy. And there's only so many times I can watch the TV show before I forget things. It is always easier to play characters whose canon doesn't mess with your memory.

[bjornwilde]

This. I don't have a lot of time myself and so amount of canon and how actively I need to follow it are important considerations. Likely why I don't play comic pups any longer.

[varadia]

Once I fall in love with a character, I have to figure out what I want to do with them. Is it tell their post-canon story? Do I have a story that I want to be telling? Are there gaps in canon I want to fill, things that I think are vital to the story to see, or fun to explore, but got left out of actual canon?

Are there parts of canon I want to change, and can I see Milliways and Milliways-friendships as a vehicle for helping that change along?

Do I just want to see this character interact with characters in-bar? To find out who they gel with, who they hate, who they want to teach, who they want to help, and unpack the why of each of these questions?

If I can't satisfy myself with an answer to any of these questions, in this order, I'm more likely to just do a one-off sandbox, or just enjoy thinking about said character rather than trying to build them a social circle and a coherent narrative.

[bjornwilde]

I've had voices that decided whom they were going to interact with before I ever app'd them. Always a good sign.

[never_shall_yield]

My only criteria these days is if they bite and don't let go, I'll play them. It doesn't happen very often any more, and sometimes I still don't have time to play them at all. But even before I've thought about apping them seriously, I'll be thinking about how to write OOMs for them, what points of canon I want to hit, who'd they'd potentially interact with, how they'd cope with the bar - I like canons where the bar can sort of be an extension of it in some way. For example, bringing Javert in at the point of his suicide attempt allowed him to believe it was Purgatory for a while, and its existence actively bothers him even now. It's a place where Valjean can (eventually) gain a sense of self-worth, and understand things from a view outside of his own world. Moriarty can play with it for long-term plot purposes if I ever get off my arse in that direction. If it's ever a place where people literally just come in for a drink, say hi to people and then go home again, it's probably over for them.

Long story short, if I can imagine doing a whole lot with them and I can't resist their voice, they're in. Just loving the character isn't enough, or I would've apped a bunch more people recently (LOOKIN' AT YOU, STARK.)

[fluffiest_archadian]

To be honest, the biggest thing for me, by a long shot, is an interesting setting. Yugo and Sherral are both pretty minor characters, but they come from settings which are genuinely fascinating to me. Setting tends to be what gets me hooked, both in a story and in the characters that inhabit it.

(Story also plays a big part, in that a story that goes in directions I don't feel comfortable with playing will immediately rule a pup out for me. This is Reason #1 why I will never app the protagonist of Bloodborne - apart from the fact that a story that spans only a single night would be impossible for me, the subject matter would also dip well below the line of what I feel comfortable writing about that.)

After that, it tends to be to whether they have some hook that I think would be interesting to play. For Eden, for example, I'm pretty fascinated by the idea of playing someone who is essentially a walking absence of personhood pretending to be a teenage boy; for Yugo, I was hooked by this Super Nice Friendly Guy whose other self is essentially a murderous berserker; and so on. And after that, it's whether I think I can write them in a way that's interesting to other people.

[ceitfianna]

If I can hear their voice and have a face that feels right. I don't get new voices very often but the ones that stay tend to want to be played and if I test and they don't go away. Also if I know they have a story to tell.

As an example, Ivan's a character I always enjoyed but I couldn't hear his voice and have a sense of his story until I read Captain Vorpatril's Alliance came out. I do kind of wish I'd brought him in at a younger point though as I'm not as clear on the next part of his story and worry about his voice.

[annalalaith]

How easy is the voice to play?

Can I pull it off?

Has the voice been around for a few months?

How busy am I?

How much crack can be generated with this pup?

Preface: this is my own personal rule, I don't apply this to other people. You know, other people might be able to pull them off. I just know I can't.

I am very very white. Therefore, I have a few rules about indigenous characters, I don't play them for fear of totally messing them up and insulting their culture and or people horribly. It is a respect thing and has a lot to do with not being initiated and not knowing what is okay to be talked about and what isn't in public. That is also why I don't usually play characters of color. I just don't feel like it would be appropriate for me, I just don't think I can do them justice. I mean I know Naruto is Asian, but he is the only exception. Think of it like this: There are some murals in a building at my school that were/are reproductions of some paintings that were found in a Kiva. Now, these are of some religious iconography that aren't supposed to be seen by the uninitiated. This caused controversy. I want to not have such problems with a pup in Milliways. Anyone else remember the Kachina like characters Marvel published in the 90's that were WAY too close to actual Kachinas? Yeah....this is what I think of when I think of playing a pup of color. I just don't think it would work.



I don't have any other rules really.

[misslucyjane]

You mean other than I LOVE THIS CHARACTER? ;) Sometimes that trumps everything. There are some characters I think need the Bar, and that's all the motivation I need.

When I do think about it more, though, it's mostly a question of voice. I've tried many different kinds of characters over the years and I've come to realize my limits (which sometimes I still try to push, to varying levels of success), but if I think I can pull off the voice then I'll app them and see what happens.

To a lesser degree I'll figure out if I want to play within their canon if it's open, or deal with the repercussions if it's closed; and if I do want to do that, what storyline do I have for them?

...sometimes that takes a while to figure out.

[bjornwilde]

"I love this character" is always a good start! And I hear you about knowing limits. I've decided I can't play consistent crack or villains, no matter how much I love the characters.