Tuesday DE: Does not compute

[bjornwilde]

Spinning off of yesterday, are there any characters you’ve thought of playing but decided against as they’d break Milliways, wouldn’t be able to be in Milliways, or Milliways would break their canon? 

Comments

[zenigatcha]

Currently debating Donovan from the The Red Strings club, cool little retro noir game on Steam. He's a bartender who can read hearts and tune drinks to emotions, and thus inspires people to spill secret feelings. Then he uses this to gather information. However, due to this weirdly supernatural bent -- apparently he can't leave The Red Strings Club.

He can exist anywhere on the building including it's roof, but outside that? He can't. To the point when they play Russian Roulette with a torturer he makes him fire all six shots. When questioned about his complete lack of death or injury, he says, 'If it was that easy to leave The Red Strings Club, I would have.'

So I feel like he'd either have to have the Bar be the Club-- or that the Red Strings would just open into the Bar like a speakeasy, replacing it's normal door, and just be like a noir speakeasy hiding in a corner of the bar as the bar is wont to shift and change per need/desire.

[from_the_outside]

I've had characters who just don't really care about the whole premise, so it wound up being too difficult to try and bring them in. Danny Williams of H50 comes to mind, he had zero desire to hang out at the Bar at the End of the Universe.

I loved playing Sookie Stackhouse in other games, but she would have a hard time in Milliways unless she found a way to dampen her telepathic ability: possible, of course. In Milliways all things are possible!

There was a brief but wonderful time when I had Cinderella's Prince from Into the Woods in the bar, but couldn't make it work to keep him because he would have been forced into character development. He was fun while he lasted, though.

Ironically enough I have a similar problem with Zaphod Beeblebrox, despite coming from Milliways' origin canon. He started to care too much about some of the Bar residents, so I yeeted him back out into the Galaxy at large.

[bjornwilde]

Oh man, character development! The bane of silly pups.

[bjornwilde]

After watching the first season of ALtered Carbon I was tempted to try out Poe but he'd be limited to his space and folks would have to wander in from Milliways. Possible as we used to have the AI house from Eureka do that, but Poe also had canon happen to him so not possible.

Have you heard the fan theory that Stan Lee's appearances in all the Marvel movies and TV shows are because he's a Watcher? Yeah, was tempted to try that too, but I decided it was too one trick and likely didn't have much lasting power.

In the past, I played Artemus Gordon from the original WIld Wild West TV show. He was a blast but it became a chore keeping access to higher-tech out of his canon.

[strongerthanyouknow]

Aaaaahhhhh! I played Ortega for a huge swath of mid-last year or some such times in the COVID time soup since time before now is just such a lie of uncertainty. If you ever want to throw them together briefly in an All-Skate.

[bjornwilde]

I am pre-coffee, is Oretega the AI house or a character from WWW?

ETA: oh wait, I see now. Yes that would be fun! I’d have to get some icons and maybe a journal.

[takethatnature]

I used to think Wilson was in the third category, as a matter of fact, but then I realised that 1) I didn't have to take him from singleplayer survival mode where his only objective is to see another day, and 2) I could just slam the Door in his face if I needed him to actually go through a survival challenge in his world without extra help.

There was a point at which I wanted to app the Stanley Parable Narrator but didn't see how I was going to get a disembodied voice with the ability to edit the scenery around other people into the Bar. (Except as a plot like someone suggested, but I didn't want to do it that way.)

[strongerthanyouknow]

Edward Cullen & Jo Harvelle are my examples of characters I kept in bar, because I loved writing them, but who absolutely, in very different ways, very much did not care about the bar. Edward accepted it as something he had to withstand (highest among them: dealing with people's thoughts while never offering up of his powers-or-race because canon), especially as Alice fell in love with it. Jo, on the other hand, just saw its convenience to use it (for silly things like sleep and money-making) for gaming every moment of her life back outside Milliways about hunting.

(Which makes it both hilarious and deeply sad, Jo spends a lot of the next decade after Milliways in her CRAU-version, bemoaning not knowing how good she had it when it was here. Especially The Door.)

Steve McGarrett was the one who cared least about being himself. He never really wanted to let it in, or be his real self versus his soldier or surfer boy faces. As such it made him impossible to play beyond those points ever.

I still from time to time consider bringing Aeryn Sun in but she's really, really not good on her own sans her crew, and John, specifically.

[magic_by_accident]

Lenny Busker/the Shadow King from Legion, the live action series. I made the journal and everything, but 1)I'm so bad at playing evil characters, and 2) I couldn't really think of a way to make her work aside from lurking in corners and cackling. And I was kind of worried that if I did it right, I'd break other X-Men characters? Maybe? So, no Lenny. (Then canon went off the rails. Oof. I couldn't even watch season 3, season 2 was so such a mess.)

[ceitfianna]

I loved the Pirate King but he was so weird and out there that it was hard to sustain him.

I've often wondered about Kit Cloudkicker from TaleSpin, he was one of the first characters I ever really loved, but animated characters are tricky. Also I never really got his voice.

I'm thinking about getting rid of Ivan Vorpatril as he hasn't really worked in Milliways. I love him as a character but I think he needs people who know him to play off, so that there can be the contrast of Ivan, you idiot and other people's takes on him. Getting that with Sameth made me so happy.

[nerves_of_ice]

I thought about playing Ellen Ripley, but I liked the way things ended with Aliens and didn't want to go down the path of the third and fourth films, so decided against it.

[chanter1944]

I once toyed with the idea of bringing in a (specifically and deliberately pre-canon-horribleness) Ariana Dumbledore, with the intent of her avoiding said pre-canon horribleness, but if nothing else, that might have brought Potterverse muns down on my head. She'd almost certainly need to be from an AU to any and all Potterverse characters previously in bar. Maybe it's a good thing I never went through with the idea.

Also, the Whistler, from the radio series of the same name. Considering his intertwined foreknowledge/omniscience and status as narrator... that would be extremely hard to pull off longterm. I can write in his voice, but the sheer amount of OOC collaboration threading even casually would take daunts me.

[canttrickmeanymore]

i played MacGyver at m'ways for a short time - he's not a really good fit, despite his inquisitiveness (a lot like Peter, but more refined) - it doesn't work, b/c mostly he'd just be trying to fix things and, unless something happens he needs to jump into, he's kinda average (i still love him to death, but RP ain't his jam).

Jack Killian from Midnight Caller is also not a great m'ways character - since his whole set up is a radio call-in show and sticking his nose into ppl's business, he wouldn't have anything to do. he does okay in slice-of-life type deals.

i tried a bunch of pups way back - some worked, some not-so-much.