ways_back_room | Ruminations

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Ruminations

This afternoon,

wickedtrue answered the question "Why Fleur?" on her journal. The response was really interesting, and in fact added a whole new dimension to a character that I've been interacting with for months. So, in light of that, I'm asking you all...why did you choose the characters you did? (And if you've got multiple characters, as most of you apparently do, just stick with the top one, or maybe two, that you play.)

And, if I'm doing the asking, I supposed I'd better throw my hat in the ring, too.

I chose Tonks on a whim. I first heard about Milliways on

copperbadge's journal, the day he announced it, and commented with something to the effect of "But I don't know that many fandoms -- will I be in over my head?" At which point Nny pounced on me and said "NO! JOIN USSSSS!" and who can say no to that? :D

So, I decided to stick with the Harry Potter canon, it being the fandom I knew best at that point. I had never done RP before Milliways, so I thought it'd be best if I went with a female character, so that the voice wouldn't be such a stretch. Likewise, I didn't want one of the younger girls; given that the setting was a bar, I didn't want to limit the way she could interact from the get-go. And lo, there was Tonks: a marginal character, largely undeveloped in-canon, possessing a nifty conversation-starting magical ability and an amusingly colorful British vocabulary. I liked her frankness ("Who d'you know who's lost a buttock?") and her tangled family history. Also? She's klutzy as all get out, and so am I, so I can sympathize.

After about five minutes' contemplation, I emailed Nny with my decision, and she said I was welcome to take Tonks.

Seven months down the road...I've never regretted that choice for a minute.

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And I cross post because I can.

Why Fleur? Really honestly, I have no clue. The way I had found Milliways was by accidentally stumbling across

copperbadge while doing research for a crazy Outdoor Drama company. I decided to do an HP character because I had read a bit of fanfic here and there, and everyone and their boyfriend seemed to be part of that fandom, so my reasoning was, I could do just about anything to one of those characters and find some essay somewhere that would justify my actions. I think I picked Fleur because...she was a minor character with very little background and only a small chance of being developed further. In my mind, I could do anything to her.

When I first starting playing her, I had every intention of making her very evil. She just...kept doing things that weren't evil. In my head, she isn't nice. She's just Fleur. Hence, my saying whenever someone asks what she would do in a situation "Fleur is Fleur is Fleur". She's nothing of what I originally planned, but I can honestly say I love her like I've never loved any of my own characters. She's a comfort to me because of her own voice. That, and she's pretty when she's tortured. I love my muse.

Why Kassandra?

Ummm.
She was from a period I enjoy, and her canon is some of my favorite stuff (and like Tonks, she is under-represented in her canon!) And she was a madwoman, sort of, but more just damaged. Also, madwomen and prophetesses get to have very little moral compunction and certainly NO MORAL COMPASS.

No moral compass! No moral compass!

*sings the 'Skandra song with you*

Much love, dear. :D

I'd been resisting joining RPs for ages, and then Milliways was pimped in

lower_tadfield. So I trundled along to look, and talked myself into giving it a go because it was such a fantastic idea.

Why B, though? Hmmm. I'd just watched Dogma, and Kevin Smith's Loki is mentioned in the user info, so my mind wandered off down that track. And B is just... so much more interesting than Loki. So much more insane. I have a crush on 90s Ben Affleck, I thought the wings were wicked-cool, and his ideas about airports hooked me, because I love places like that for the same reason. Um.

I'm crap. It was so much a spur-of-the-minute decision, but... no regrets. Nope. *loves B soso much*

I was reading Sam's journal and he wrote this post about a multi-fandom RP that was starting where he was playing Sirius as the bartender. That didn't mean a lot to me, as my caving in to read the Potter books was still a couple months away, but something in it called to me. I wanted to pick a good character, and wasn't sure if I wanted to go for famous or obscure, and settled on Snow. I was a fairly recent Fables addict, started on #25 and had gotten all the back issues. I don't know what made me decide to join, really, having zero RPG experiance in any form.

Snow chose me.

To be honest? They just seemed like fun. :) Like a lot of people here, it seems, I'd never RPed before Milliways, and I enjoy the challenge of staying in character while playing someone who is pratcially *nothing* like me. (I can't imagine how many times I've had to edit a post from what *I* would do to what the character would do.) I also enjoy letting different parts of my personality out to play in the guise of a fictional character.

Why Valentine? I've wondered that a lot lately, actually. It was mainly because I had just re-read Ender's Game, and realized what a deep and misunderstood character Val was. I also thought it would be interesting to bounce the science and philosophy of Ender's Game off of the rest of the characters. I had just left another (Ender's Game themed) game I was active on for almost two and a half years, and really wanted a new home, with connections to the universe I had so solidly in my head. I haven't been disappointed in my desicion yet.

As to the rest of my babies, they were more random. Mark and Angela were more for comic value than anything else. Malfoy came because I wanted evil, and he took residence in my head. Threepio also took up residence because of the Speaking, and watching Star Wars perhaps a few too many times. Jane is a quiet torture of Val, and an exploration in apathy.

We now return to: A Milliways Story: Raphael

It seems that I'm one of the multitudes who found this place thanks to

copperbadge. I was super hesitant at first. I mean, not only was there pressure of playing with Net People I'd been ~~stalking~~ reading for a while, but they were all writers, where as anyone who's been privy to most of my threads knows my grammar is shite. I was one of those Left Behind children, don'cha know.

In the end curiosity got the better of me. Knowing my written limitations like I do, I figured I had to choose a canon that no one knew nearly as well as I did.

This could only mean Ninja Turtles. Very few people remember the old B&W Mirage books from the mid-80s, and even fewer are willing to admit that in public. Turtles was my first comicbook obsession, and Raph my favorite character from the book. He's brash, unpredictable, and best of all reactionary, which is my preferred RP style. Really, there was no choice in the matter.

I floated the idea past Sam in a lj comment. He laughed and kinda dared me to follow through. So now we add "no excuse" to the "no choice".

Now you're all stuck with me. Typos and all.

When I took Bernard, I was terrified. He's, in my opinion, one of the best characters ever invented, like, EVAR. And Robbins's style is so distinctive.

But I took a huge chance, having done very little RP to speak of, and jumped in with both feet. Because I love Bernard, I hate Leigh-Cheri, and I wanted to see what he'd do if I changed his stars.

I think he's doing pretty damn okay.

It's hard to answer "why him." I think that's because it was knee-jerk. I just... wanted to play him. And, like Meggo, I have never regretted it. He is a joy.

I miss Skandra.

Hee, maybe she can make another ghostly appearance for the wedding.

The honest, just-facts answer? I apped him back in July because

gramarye1971 had already snagged

merriman_lyon and I wanted to play a laconic bastard for a change (as opposed to someone more integrally cheerful like

gwion_bach, as I have for a while), and Roland was next on my list. :D He's grown to surprise me, though, since I've begun to play him with regularity.

Roland Deschain is a truly fascinating character -- Stephen King says in DT6 that he meant for Roland to be a version of Joe, and he says in the essay "On Being Nineteen" that he wanted to set a fantasy epic in Sergio Leone's (director and co-writer of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, also known as

joewithnoname's canon) American West. To make the epic happen, though, King had to give the laconic gunman a reason to be questing. Had to give him nobility and a sense of purpose...even though in The Dark Tower 1: The Gunslinger, they're buried very, very deeply.

Roland, though, spends so much time by himself and relying on himself that he often goes to one of the extreme sides of the way of the gun, the way of Eld -- the part that renounces all chivalrous impulses and motivations -- in order to get closer to the Dark Tower. The entire tale can be regarded as a story of recovery. It's when Roland is around people again that he truly advances towards the Tower. You can compare Roland's mindset in the early volumes of DT to that of Morpheus in The Sandman; they're rather similar, character-wise.

...so you take this cold and often clueless killing machine, who has a desperately romantic (in the sense of epic) core but no imagination whatsoever, who has the severest case of one-track-mind I've ever run across, and who just isn't really very nice (but can surprise you every so often), and you stick him in the bar at the end of the universe among lots of people...

Interesting things are bound to happen. Roland's good at rising to a challenge, but the challenge the bar presents is one that can't be solved with a gun. (It can, however, be solved with Green Eggs and Ham. Or it can start to be solved. Believe it or not, I had ulterior motives in making him read it.) Roland isn't entering the bar from the end of his canon, and so he hasn't gotten as far in his transformation as he does in the end...but he's on his way. The new situation, though, makes things difficult, and ultimately, I think, more rewarding.

Roland has flaws. I identify with him and his flaws a hell of a lot more than I feel comfortable admitting. Playing around with his character, searching out how he'd react and why, helps me see where I go wrong, sometimes. And yet I still love him and want him to be a kind and decent man...and sometimes in canon he is. He's working on it. He's not perfect, but he's trying, always. There are hidden depths to sai Deschain, as there are in everybody. I love him, and he's an utter joy to write -- even when he's being a relentless bastard. (Sometimes especially when he's being a relentless bastard.)

So yes. I love Roland because as I write him, he teaches me. And canonically, Roland is a very good teacher.

I'd heard

gypsyjr talking about Milliways on her LJ, and, because I've always been a big fan of crossover insanity, I hopped over to take a look. Problem was, at the time, nearly every character I wanted to play was already taken -- I was primarily involved in X-Men and Harry Potter then.

Then I got the Firefly DVDs for my birthday last November. When Wash made his first entrance, showing himself to be a competent pilot, a huge dork, and a man with a great sense of humour -- all in under three minutes -- I was head-over-heels in love. What can I say? I have a thing for the big loveable dorks of the world. *g*

So I kept watching, and Wash kept getting more interesting; he's one of those characters that has a solid foundation in canon, but, because he's not always in the spotlight, has a lot of room for further development as well. And lo and behold, when I pounced on the Milliways cast list the minute the credits for "Objects in Space" rolled, nobody had claimed him. I thought, "Oh, man, he would be fun -- I'd better snatch him up before somebody else does."

And zee rest, eet ees heestory.

Why Dream?
'Lisechen told me to.

Why Dream with a side of Nyarlathotep?
Um. Would you believe that I think Nyarlathotep is just that cool, but simply wouldn't do as a character on his own?

Why Delirium?

...

I feel like there should be some sort of hysterical laughter here. Because, really, if RP choices say anything about us, I've rather screwed myself.

I had only recently finished reading all of The Sandman. And, to be honest, my first thought was to play Death. Because. She's Death and who doesn't love her?

But Del...oh, why not Del? Because she's a brat who even Desire will let get away with some things. Because she's the baby and the eighth oldest being in creation all at once. Because she TaLkS LiKe ThiS. Because of blood roses and muffins and frogs and butterflies. Because she's that girl who got hurt so badly she couldn't live with herself anymore and had to become someone else. Because she wants, wants so very, very, very badly, to be good, and when it comes down to it, she's not. She's just there and everyone knows her, a little bit. No one in their right mind wants to.

Because she knows things. SeCrEt ThInGs. Everything that isn't in Destiny book resides in her skull, when she remembers to have one. Because she gives Raph a ninja blankie and makes Destruction and Dream choke when she mentions sex.

Because she really, really, really likes sex.

Because Delirium was once Delight and that doesn't ever entirely go away. Because, if she could (can she?), she would make everyone everywhere happy again forever. (Or maybe not. After all, she didn't get to be happy. Why should anyone else?) Because she's a sucker for happy endings, and because she doesn't believe they exist. It NevEr EnDs, SiLlY GiRl. NeVeR EvEr EvEr UnTil It AlL gOeS bOoM.

Because someday she'll change. She's Del who is Delirium who was once Delight who might be Delusion who's just plain Del, if you can be plain when you're polkadotted and aquamarine.

Because all she really, truly, honestly wants is to be loved. Even broken. Even as Delirium.

Because I like to see the world from her point of view. Through one green eye and one blue eye, with silver flecks across one and with fishies in her view.

It actually makes a lot of sense, her way.

Why Sunny?

Because she bites.

And it's fun.

Love me!
LOOOOVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Well, i actually started out here with a different char, Prince Rupert from Blue Moon Rising... but i just wasn't getting the right vibe off him, so i looked around my room and my eyes caught a copy of "The Books of Magic" And tim was born. And as i got more and more of his comic books, the ones not bound in graphic novel format, i found more and more interesting ways to mess him up, and still be canon....And as for why I'm here, y'all have Madb to thank for that.

*bitchslaps her into silence*

Bitch, please.

otherwhiterider: This story starts well before Milliways, actually, with a now-more-or-less-dead Good Omens RPG. By the time I found out about it the canon-developed Horsepersons were gone, and I've got a soft spot for that lot (don't ask why, I don't even know), so I asked the mod if I could RP Pestilence. She said yes, and I ran with it. That RPG died by the time Nny came up with Milliways, and I went, 'hmm. Something to do with Pestilence!' and signed him up. He's not in often because I can do the voice so well I scare myself (case in point: I really started in with the original game when SARS hit the news. He was throwing a party inside my head, just about).

artsmartscarlet: The lack of Daria characters was getting to me, I wanted to see my first fandom represented, and I didn't think Daria would have as much fun in the bar as Jane. And besides, for all that I write a lot and get called Daria by my family, I'm really more like Jane anyway.

withrocksin: Have been RPing the same character (different LJ, though) at

discworld_rpg for. Holy crap, nearly a year and a half now. I didn't bring in the first LJ bacuse I've used up all the canon plot points there, and wanted to start over. As for why Imp in the first place... well, because Soul Music is a bloody awesome book, and I wanted to know what happened to him afterward. He's in the bar because I turned out to be that much of a geek (with encouragement from Ji and Beth... XD) and because I sort of wouldn't trust anyone else with him, now. And that might sound more snobbish than I mean to be, but... well, I've put a year and a half (ish) into figuring out what makes him tick, you know?

Hey look! It's someone else who's here because of

copperbadge!

Anyway, I thought the concept was awesome. At the time I had a terminal fear of playing a main character from anything because I didn't think I'd get the characterization decent enough, and Regulus was the first minor character I thought of. I figured there was probably more to him than what Sirius told Harry, so I applied for him and here I am.

(I picked up Ame because at the time, Regulus was being somewhat dense, and I wanted the chance to play someone who was actually -- dare I say it? -- clever. Also she's just cool.)

I picked Joe because Roland was taken. Now, this isn't sour grapes--Sweeney's a hell of a lot better Roland than I would have been--but that's how it happened.

I ended up liking him a lot--his selfishness and his toughness and his unexpected compassion. He's very very very different than me, yet I can almost always tell how he'd react.

Eddie? Somebody had to do it. Playing Eddie scares me, because he never shuts up. Joe and I are both antisocial, for completely different reasons, but Eddie's mouth is always running, and usually with the kind of outrageous chatter only Stephen King's loudmouths can get right. But I absolutely love him in canon, and I couldn't resist.

Monkey is a crack elemental, and FUN beyond all belief. And that's all I need him to be. It's very relaxing to run around blowing minds.

--John

((mun got bored at work and wrote 'em all up anyway))

Why Van Helsing?

Actually, he wasn't my first choice for Milliways. I had thought about using Morgan from The Dresden Files, but decided to choose a character with a bit more canon (plus, I'd just watched the movie Van Helsing four times and was fully engrossed in the canon - I, quite literally, could not pull myself out of it). I had done some fic-based RPG before and had used a character I knew fairly well (I play that one here too - Connor MacLeod), so I chose a character that I didn't know as well, or that I knew well enough to be able to fill-in some blanks in his backstory. Needless to say, he was severely under-developed when I brought him in, but, slowly, depth is being created.

Sometimes he's a difficult character to play, because he says so little. He's short-spoken and action-oriented. And, he's not terribly outgoing - that's why I gave him the dog, or part of why I gave him the dog; it gives him a reason to have to talk to people.

Why Bob the Skull?

This one was purely fandom driven, but I also just LOVE Bob. I wanted to play someone from the Dresden fandom, but I also wanted a periphery character. He has no free will and no real moral compass. The fun part is, he can pop into the bar just about anywhere - and almost has too.

Why Connor MacLeod?

Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't bring him in earlier. I'd RP'd him before and Highlander was my main fandom for a long time. He's a fantastic character and, aside from the immortality bit, he's very 'real' - with foibles and quirks and faults - all very visible. (That was part of the problem with playing Van Helsing - his faults aren't readily visible, that and the guy only has 7 years worth of memories.)

Why Martouf / Lantash?

One word: underrepresentation. Actually, this was my foray into having a 'bound' character, which, quite honestly, hasn't proceeded as nicely as I would have liked. I love the character, but he has so little canonical background, that it becomes difficult for him to talk to other characters w/o writing a whole fic.

Why Harry Dresden?

Harry, I brought in strictly to play off Bob. After thinking about it, I realized I probably should have app'd the two together anyway, since Bob is almost as much a part of Harry as his magic.

Why MacGyver?

Because he's MacGyver. One needs no other reason. This was one of those characters that I kept thinking 'we need a MacGyver in the bar'. Then, I was watching episodes one day and ~~I snapped~~ app'd him. I've always loved this character and MacGyver was my first 'true' fandom - you know, the one you get obsessive about and have to see every episode and every interview and clip every article. Yeah - Mac's the man.

*cackles evily* ^___^

I found Milliways through my friends list a few weeks ago, and I would probably have become an addict even if there weren't Dark Tower characters here, but...I came along just in time for Susannah and Eddie's entrances and their reunion, and I swear, I almost cried reading those threads. *fangirls her fellow DT players*

So, I really wanted to get involved somehow, and when I saw they didn't have a Cuthbert I decided they really needed one, but at first, I wasn't sure I'd be able to play him. In real life, I am nowhere near as cool as Bert. But, well, I kept thinking about it, and somewhere along the line, he just worked his way inside my head and wouldn't leave. And then I suddenly got the idea for what he was going to say when he and Roland met for the first time in M'ways (http://www.livejournal.com/community/milliways_bar/2712241.html)--and that was it. I couldn't not apply, after that.

Anyway, Cuthbert is probably one of my favorite characters from anything ever. He rocks. One one level, he's hilarious. On another, he's not someone you want to be in a showdown with (in no small part because it's so easy to write him off as a joker and not think of him as a serious threat). On another, he's exactly the sort of best friend a character like Roland needs.

He's also been surprisingly easy and ridiculously fun to play, because he's such a vibrant character he pretty much writes himself, and I just sit back and try to steer him where I want him to go.

As for Alice (no, Alice, I haven't forgotten you, don't worry)--*shrugs* I love Alice in Wonderland, and I thought it would be good to have a character who could just flit around the bar having fun, and who I couldn't forsee getting involved in any really emotional and complicated plotlines.

"Practically." *facepalm* Damn typos.

~

ash__evildead,

thunderbird_1 and

one_fang_kitty

Playing Eddie scares me, because he never shuts up. Joe and I are both antisocial, for completely different reasons, but Eddie's mouth is always running, and usually with the kind of outrageous chatter only Stephen King's loudmouths can get right.

That's exactly how I feel with Bert. Every time I post, I'm afraid I'm either going to go overboard and make him too outrageous, or drop the ball comletely and run out of funny.

...But, y'know, that too is fun in its terrifying way.

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