tuesday de

[inlovewithwords]

Meh, it's Tuesday somewhere.

Riding on yesterday, what kind of character do you really wish you could play but have struggled with?

And folks, if you recognize a type and have a suggestion for a canon or character for someone to check out and see if they click, suggest away!

Comments

[arkadia]

I am occasionally tempted to play villainous characters (oh hi Ardyn), but the problem I always run up against when thinking about that is that there's a really thin line that needs to be walked there between making them still a villain and still having them be the kind of character that can actually meaningfully interact and engage with others.

Tip them too far one way, and you end up with a character who can't really play off anyone, who will probably be regarded IC as just sort of an irritant. Tip them too far the other, and you lose the core of what makes that character interesting. It's not impossible to pull off successfully, not by any stretch of the imagination -- I have very fond memories of reading Blodwen's threads, for example -- but it's something of a balance beam.


In a more general sense, what often stops me from playing characters is that I can't get the cadence of their speaking voice down. I like being able to get a good grasp on how the character sounds, how they approach subjects, what kind of phrasing they use, and when I can't, it creates something of a barrier to actually writing that character (and they tend to start picking up the speech patterns of another one of my pups, instead).

[splash_of_blue]

I know what you mean about the speaking voice. I try to write in a way that mimics, or at least plays off, their speaking style (or their narration style if a book character), so that when I feel I'm writing really well, all my pups have slightly different narrations as well as speaking patterns. If I can't find a way in to writing that suits the pup, I really struggle to keep going.

[arkadia]

Yeah. This is part of why, despite repeated attempts to test them, I've struggled to actually get a handle on Jyou or Koushiro -- I just can't seem to get their speaking voices right, something's always off with them.

[inlovewithwords]

Villains. Anakin is a massive anomaly for me in this regard. I just don't do villains well, for the most part. The only previous exception is Kratos Aurion from Tales of Symphonia, and he's... complicated and not exactly a villain actually.

Also, assholes. Like, people who are deliberately, joyfully assholes--not just kind of rude (Lois is rude sometimes) or indifferent, but actively going out of their way to be dicks and/or hurtful to other people. I just can't do it.

Some of it's me, I think, not knowing how to step out of that--but also, some of it is that I have to see the ability in a character to make an actual empathetic connection in their canon to want to play them, and some of it is that RP is all about characters building connections and if I have a character who genuinely will go out of their way to be a jerk? Well, no character in their right mind will like them, and it will be justified. And that can be really hard to handle OOC! In particular, you want to be liked, and if that's not the case IC, you have to take some responsibility for that as a player and not take offense, and that's kind of more emotional energy than I usually have.

Also some characters I just cannot get the rhythm of their syntax. I can't really explain which ones those are.

EDIT: I also don't do the Total Crack type of character. R2 is about the closest I come.

EDIT THE SECOND: Also I think just picking up new characters has been hard for me lately. I also know that I have a harder time with characters without castmates. For me the fun is all in playing with people and I get lonely very easily.

[splash_of_blue]

I struggle with really macho, manly men. The closest I play are Raoul of Goldenlake and Phil Coulson, and both of them are masculine figures who subvert traditional expectations of masculinity (one of the tiny details I love about Raoul is that he's really, really good at sewing!). I've occasionally tried to write Jim Prideaux from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - who I absolutely adore - but I think it's his stereotypical Englishman, stiff-upper-lip, deeply restrained masculinity that makes it difficult to find my way into his head.

I also don't really 'do' traditionally maternal women. It's something I struggle with when writing Beref, who's probably the closest of my characters to a 'traditional' woman (and she's a goddess!). The exception would probably be Molly, who although not a traditional woman in most senses is great with kids and adores them - hence the adopted mum/big sister role adultMoll plays with Kitt.

[bjornwilde]

Villains and asshole/grumpy people. I loved to read/watch them, but I always end up making them too nice in play. I get that Bar is a different situation than their canon, but I never seem to be able to keep their base self, or keeping that base self active in Bar gets boring for me.

Crack pups. I appreciate reading them, but I can't hold it up. I tried with HERBIE but it just didn't work well for me.

[electro_kinetic]

I struggle with characters who *require* a cast to play right. I tried with Micah, it worked while there was a huge contingent, and I don't know whether I just lost his voice or what, but I can't seem to keep him going solo. (This might also jut be bad writing. The author is fairly notorious for making him perfect in very irritating ways and perfection is hard to write.)

Super masculine is a problem for me too? Sometimes I can get it, but it's just not a headspace I can get into easily.

[cameoflage]

I tend to not even attempt the characters who I don't think I'd be good at, rather than try and fail, so I don't have a lot of case studies. Usually I struggle more with the amount of research a character requires than with their direct portrayal. (I did once get hyped up to play the Stanley Parable Narrator and then trip over the fact that a disembodied voice with moderate reality-warping abilities would work very poorly in this specific setting, but it's less that I don't think I could write him and more that I don't think I could write him here.)