STATE OF THE PUPS

[respectorcist]

SPOCK

RECENT: Spock is definitely suffering from some kind of entrenchment. I've had him so long my security for the voice is strong enough that I can always reliably pull him out, but besides getting a house with Jim, I haven't been doing anything with Spock. Even with Jim, the storyline there hasn't been played out recently, because of my health issues followed by Sarah's hiatus, which sucks, but isn't my fault or anyone else's. I just have to acknowledge that I need to earnestly pick my brain for direction for Spock I still definitely want him to have some sort of Pygmalion snap-back in Darrow, where he realizes that he's becoming more human because Darrow's society is really human (I don't want to hear any bull about how Darrow isn't particularly human, either -- playing from a lot of inhuman character perspectives, yeah, Darrow is hella North American.) The most interesting thing about Spock's character in ToS was that he recognized the usefulness of both objective and subjective thinking, but in the end always believed that Surak's Logic was the superior course for himself. My alien needs to be written as the alien he is, at the end of the day, and I need to point him in that direction.

SOON: A plot in which Spock royally slips up and makes a mistake. He needs something to shake him to the foundation after two years in Darrow. Spock needs a tag into Andrea's EP, since she's got the new baby.

DROP LIKELIHOOD: 0/10, but I need a re-watch and some plot.

NEXT EP: Pending hearing from the mods about a question I had, he will be on the beach doing experiments with the albedo of Darrow's moon.

ROBIN GOODFELLOW

RECENT: I'm stalling out with Robin badly. His voice comes, but sometimes gives me trouble, and to me it feels like his interactions are lackluster. They are superficially Robin but lacking a sort of deep energy that the character often possesses. He's a busybody, and I really need this to show in my writing. From the canon-point I took him from, later in the series, he's certainly a little more settled than in the first couple novels, but he's still not the same sort of stable he's been in Darrow. He needs more emotional shake-ups. He's capricious, so he's only sometimes logical, and other times he just wants to stir up shit. It's that shit-stirring that's missing, maybe.

SOON: Some action plots, something that will get him more close, emotional CR. Robin has a lot of casual acquaintances, which he loves, but it's also healthier for him to have more closer friends. People that he earnestly loves bring out the best and worst sides of him. With everyone else, he tends to default to breezy, which makes eventually for boring, repetitive play.

DROP LIKELIHOOD: 3/10, a re-read is a must.

NEXT EP: Perhaps I'll give him a run-in with the cops to be rescued from.

OKUMURA RIN

RECENT: Good. Rin is working on a lot of good relationships in Darrow, and a lot of them are genuinely healthy for him, which is nice. He's a good character to play because his youth and character arc mean that his opinions and behaviors are always being course-corrected ashe gains wisdom and experience. It also helps keep him fresh to play that he starts out standoffish and then warms up to almost clingy pretty quickly. His girlfriend, Nuriko, is recently experimenting with getting a living, female body. Nuriko being bigendered, both male and female, but born male and preferring to have a female body. So that will be something for him to work over in his narrative. He's young enough that he's still uncertain about his own sexual identity, and even now that Nuriko has a female body to utilize, he will probably just considering himself 'the person who loves Nuriko,' in any form she comes in. It does play into his own issues, to an extent, because he has some struggles in general over how to identify himself, being half-demon. At the end of the day, it's nice to say he's half-demon like the half matters, but he knows that without the context of having his own body that exists in Assiah, there is functionally no difference between Rin and any other demon in his universe. He's just possessing his own body.

SOON: Been working on a private plotty thing, not a big one, with Di and SarahV and SarahK, which is slowly going and un-posted, which is ... fine, actually, because it's a turning point for Rin but it can happen at any time in the game timeline, when it's posted. I definitely intentionally back-burnered moving this forward so that Castiel's storyline could play out some, and so could Dean and Urahara's thing, but I want to bring it back now that I am well.

DROP LIKELIHOOD: 0/10

NEXT EP: He's had some cute stuff lately, so I want to give him a good EP in Ao-Ex style. I want to stretch my horror-writing muscles and give him something a little fucked up. And get myself boo'd out of Darrow for writing seventeen year old boys being disembowled or something.

LAFAYETTE REYNOLDS

RECENT: At least picked up some activity with him recently, although his EP is going sloooow because I was hospitalized four days early for my surgery. A slowtime is fine too. Still stubbornly refuse to drop Lafayette although sometimes I feel like Darrow doesn't quite know what to do with him. Like House, he's one that I want to play to the hilt, if possible. I want to shake the feeling that I need to calm him down somehow and make his characterization more neutral just for worry that I might upset someone Which is not to say that people will be upset, but that I've been burned in the past by people taking what I do ICly and applying it to my beliefs and etc oocly. Lafayette, like Robin, just needs more energy. I'm not communicating his energy satisfactorily. He's learning a bit of magic with Hermione and working at Semele's. He may get a job with Ichihara Yuuko soon, also, which will give him some interesting char development

SOON: Job with Yuuko. Maybe get him into some trouble for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, actual story of Lafayette's life.

DROP LIKELIHOOD: 2/10, just tag more people relentlessly, Lys.

NEXT EP: Maybe Laffy getting into some trouble inside Semele's? Although he was in a bad mood in his last EP. Then again, nothing is wrong with that.

REMUS LUPIN

RECENT: What am I doing. Nothing. I have no direction for Remus, really. It's a little hard to get him out. Character power dynamics make it a little strange to thread him with Normals, and there are limited things which he can do with the other werewolf pups in Darrow because he's not going to be someone who's rubbed the right way by their lifestyles, although he will be polite. He is VERY polite. Which is almost the trouble. He doesn't want to impose on other characters.

SOON: Hopefully I'll figure out a plot for him that will create the strong character relationships, the sort of bonds that Remus needs to flourish. He's a private person, who it's important that I do my best to not just tag around but follow up until trust is built.

DROP LIKELIHOOD: 7/10

NEXT EP: Maybe today. I should think about what kind of shitty night he had over the full moon.

URAHARA KISUKE

RECENT: Kisuke has been busy. Which suits him fine. Although he likes to relax, he likes to relax when he's in the mood for relaxing. Having tons of things going on keeps his character voice alive for me. I'm really pleased with him in general in Darrow. He always has interesting interactions with his canonmate, Rukia, and he recently helped create a weapon for Dean that is somewhere between a Zanpakutou and a Fullbring. He'll want to follow up with Dean about that, although the minutia of helping Dean train it bores him, as does all detail work. He met some interesting people lately, like Mike, and I want to follow up on those in the future.

SOON: He's going to make himself some kids by inserting the ghosts of NPC children into artificial bodies and binding those souls to his own so that they don't Hollowfy. Instead of helping them to pass on. Because what's a moral code.

DROP LIKELIHOOD: 0/10

NEXT EP: Giving him an action EP next where he deals with a Hollow, because all his EPs lately have been understated.

UZUMAKI NARUTO

RECENT: Quieter. Which is maybe mostly my fault, but I also think there just haven't been as many EPs lately in the community the last couple months. Or maybe it's that a lot of them have been debuts. Either way, I don't feel discontent with Naruto, but I really want to get him out and about more always. I have a huge urge to play him pretty evenly because Naruto as a canon right now is pretty exciting, so my excitement for the canon carries over into my play. I hope that keeps freshness there.

SOON: I know I want to do more with Kurama, and also involve Naruto in both some more NINJA-Y stuff as well as work with dealing with the spirituality of the character. Naruto's character is deeply philosophical, despite superficially being kind of bog standard young male protag. He's informed by Buddhism, Hinduism, and most especially Daoism, and I want to weave these things into his dialogue and his relationships with others. I did recently re-read The Buddhist Catechism while in the hospital because di is a butt. He's going to have a run-in with an NPC baddie I'm working on who is a member of an organization I'm poking at. Someone who's been genetically modified. It'll give him Orochimaru feels.

He's going to be a daddy, sometime in the next couple months, after I finish NaruKorra threads with Di related to that, soooo, he will be happy about that.

DROP LIKELIHOOD: 0/10

NEXT EP: I want to give him a moral dilemma. Naruto is interesting when faced with moral dilemmas.

TEMARI

RECENT: Still pretty much nothing. She's been doing some flirty with Shikamaru. Neither one of them has yet really made any effort to officialize their relationship, buuut it is a relationship. She met some lovely ladies at Gutters, I'll try to follow up with them. Generally, I need to tag her in places and stop giving a shit whether or not people are tired of my manga characters. I know that my ability to handle genre characters is decent enough that the canon source of a character shouldn't matter that much if I work on being an active player.

SOON: Tag all the EPs. I want to EP her but at the same time, I'm doubtful I'll get a ton of tag-ins on such an obscure character with her personality, so I should hold off maybe until I have her meet more folks.

DROP LIKELIHOOD: 7/10

NEXT EP: Nope.

ABEL NIGHTROAD

RECENT: My newest. Nobody liked his last EP, so I'll have to do something there pft. I realize he's going to be a hard sell For whatever reason, a lot of people get uncomfortable with the idea of people playing characters that are members of clergy (unless that clergy is Eastern, but we're not going to get into that here because I don't want to soapbox). I never really understand that, because clergy members are people too and there's no reason not to portray them, and portray them as human beings with faults, but I am aware it makes a lot of folks uncomfortable. Abel's met a lot of people he really likes so far though, including Rayojini, Marius and Tara. I'll make sure to follow up with them. He's been bounty hunting off and on with Faye, but never accepts any of the bounty payment. He's opening a food pantry/shelter.

SOON: I want to let him do some things less related to his more pleasant life choices. The point of Abel's character is that all people do ill at points in their lives, whether by intent or necessity, and that the goal of a person is not to be good but to become better. The character also is an excellent tool for illustrating the definition of 'sin' as 'ignorance.' Whereby, the root of all evil that we do to one another is our own ignorance, willful or otherwise. I want to have him deal with the realities of needing to consume blood in Darrow, as he had back home. Having Esther in Darrow makes things interesting for him. She holds him back emotionally from taking care of his needs as a vampire.

DROP LIKELIHOOD: 0/10

NEXT EP: He's gonna nom a vamp, because it's about time Darrow's vampires felt a little pressure from the food chain.

S O O N

BARNABY BROOKS, JR.

I love TIGER&BUNNY. To death. It's a deconstruction of the superhero genre, but not a mean-spirited one. Darrow has plenty of superhero types around and lots more possibly being apped soon, so he can always lean on making CR with those sorts of characters. He's a little like a combination of Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, but he's a real beginner, and a lot of his ideas are theory, more than practice. Darrow will let him grow, and growth like that is great for steady character arcs. I'm also going to be playing him interpreted as gay. His sexuality is left intentionally up in the air by the writers in canon, and I both REALLY like shipping him with Wild Tiger (come on di come on just do it) and personally think that Darrow's super-folks could use a less heteronormative member in their bunch.

"Tiger & Bunny - Tik Tok" (Watch on YouTube)

Also just. TIGER&BUNNY. Go watch it gaiz. Even if you've never seen an anime before, if you like DC/Marvel comics, you'll get a kick out of it. Easily one of the most genuinely entertaining things I've ever watched. It's available free both subbed and dubbed on Hulu and is only 24 episodes long and completed.

GINKO

Mushi-shi: Zoku-sho, Mushi-shi's second season, is airing CURRENTLY, so I won't be apping Ginko until it completes after the end of the season. But I really want to play Ginko for personal reasons. I've loved the character for ages, but the recent loss of vision in my left eye has made me want to app one-eyed Ginko even more. Also, Mushi-shi is just a ridiculously opulent, artful and bittersweet series, with a distinctly Japanese pathos about it. It makes my heart ache how lovely it is. If I can communicate even 1/10th of that je ne sais quoi in my narrative for him, I will be satisfied with my descriptive writing, from a writerly perspective.

Also in consideration currently are Tres Iqus from Trinity Blood, Peregrin Took from The Lord Of The Rings, Gimel Metatronim from Burying The Shadow and Megamind from Megamind. GIMEL is almost a certainty; the others may have to wait until I decide whether or not I will go through with potential drops.

ANYBODY WANT THREADS FOR APRIL/MAY? I'm working on the former and planning the latter.

Comments

[spirit_of_vitriol]

Flavia + Spock + Moon Experiments = Fun

(sorry, that's not really a comment but it is true)

[respectorcist]

I AGREE

(i'm not sure this is a comment you can 'agree' with but i don't care)

[goddamnbatman]

Am still up for the Spock things we talked about the last time, life permitting. I dont think they've made a req length thread since December which leaves a tragic, Trek-shaped handsomeness hole in Darrow that must be remedied

Will totes pick up the Rin/Yukio things again, I am almost back on the rp horse

What can I say about Kisuke except more, forever, and always. Mebbe with Jim again too since he likes that fucking weirdo a lot, and Dean needs anything that forces him out of permanent lineface

I can give you more crazy ninja Jason for your slightly less crazy ninjas. He'll be getting a pretty un-superhero-y post later this month I hope, about g i r l s. and/or losing his goddamn mind over his bff Bucky returning but idk how that's gonna go yet XD

And my deeply Catholic non-priest is ready for your athiest priest p much any time once he's settled XD

[respectorcist]

Basically I need ALL the Jim and Spock things as soon as possible. XD I am literally not allowed to get up from the computer until the surgeon says I can bear weight on my foot so I have all the availabilities ever right now and I am dying of boredom. I'm sorry I've been such a shitty shipmate since winter started. XD

Take your time wrt Rin stuff, I intentionally let it simmer because you had so much plotty shit going on before Coachella. XD But I always love threading Rin off Dean.

Kisuke+Jim more of this, he appreciates a man who does not immediately cry sexual harassment. Also Naruto wants to talk about girls with Jason ok.

ABEL AND ARAMIS NEED TO MEET like immediately. Somehow. Even if it's in a private thread.

[goddamnbatman]

I need like....A thread with Aramis and Porthos to properly settle them - since I posted with 2 days to go before my trip b/c I needed it to live - but then we can Abel it up

So much girl talk XD Basically Jason is good at many things, but the ladies aren't one of them. He had srs girlfriend before but her mun sucked so Ima largely pretend it didn't happen oops

Moar Kisuke in any context XD I don't have immediate plans to post either of those fellows, but if it gets too long we can private it

Rinbeans, I will be getting bakc to Dean's post hopefully today, and god willing the damn plot threads I've been trying to get to forever XD

Your poor foot x_x Don't roll your computer chair over it okay, just stay still and let the spacehusbands fight. How do you want to start that up?

[respectorcist]

If they go too long without a thread Kisuke will just track Dean down and dump him in front of a Hollow or something. "I wanted to see what you'd learned!" The obvious way to ask people how are things.



i just like ruining dean's day with creepy parallels

I have no idea, but I'm fully willing to start something for them if you toss me a prompt, however stupid? My biggest issue is having too many choices to start with. I cannot decide but I want me some Jim. XD

[goddamnbatman]

Sometimes I wonder how much those people watched the first two seasons of SPN, rofl

Annnnnnnnnnd if we're still going with a reversion to Vulcan tendencies/processes, idk, maybe Jim is being a messy human (I always picture him like this, only his yeoman keeps his room all captainly aboard ship, and he thinks it happens by magic or something idk), but extra messy b/c of the construction...tracking dirt onto floors Spock has just perfected or something of that ilk?

Or if you want something more dramatic and less domestic to fight about, I can ponder that too XD

[respectorcist]

SPN was hugely popular in Japan a few years back, up to getting one-season anime (which was actually even scarier than the original series bc Japan likes to take a horrible thing and make it even more disturbing.) The series' author/artist, Katou-sensei, was a fan and she's actually done some SPN fanart that's floated around her twitter account, including gender-flopped drawings of the main SPN cast. Srry Dean. XD


Starting out small and easing Jim into the twat sounds good to me, so I will write a start up for them.

[respectorcist]

one day di and i will switch them on the same week and ruin dean's life with asian schoolgirls

[goddamnbatman]

Given his affinity for Busty Asian Beauties this is a perilous situation

[respectorcist]

http://perform-admirably.dreamwidth.org/3930.html tur-duhr

[goddamnbatman]

With my favorite constipated icon~

[effseedee]

did someone say genetically modified NPC baddie? jessica drew all "THIS IS MY JAM."

And mine, too, obviously, hella stoked for said organization, they should bust in on head guy or something and then be... unable to do anything because he's slippery and they got nothing on him but just to introduce him, idk. I am just jazzed for suspicious science people~

[respectorcist]

it is a baddie that can LIQUEFY THEIR BODY into a watery substance and avoid physical damage, except they are a trial, and it ends up being that the more they use this ability the harder it becomes to keep their form solid. so lots of like, piece of the body stretching out and dripping off and you know bad guy angst until eventually they die, whether it be in prison or elsewhere

because i'm a sadist

[effseedee]

awwwww heck yis

[respectorcist]

pfff I am probably going to post an EP for liquid man sometime tonight ... after i tag back the stuff i need to tag back and stop dickin around

[effseedee]

just in time for my weekend I thank you for this convenience :D

[dynamicsymmetry]

Re: Mike and Kisuke, yeeeeeeeeeah I definitely want to do more with that. I'm not even entirely sure what it is yet, I just know I'm liking it.

You know I always love threads with Robin. They don't have to be ABOUT anything in particular but I'm up for whatever anytime.

[respectorcist]

Mike and Kisuke is interesting for me because in a lot of ways the particular relation that he has toward Mike is one where he feels less like he has to hold a part of himself back. Kisuke is sort of exquisitely self-aware, and while he doesn't particularly dislike anything about himself, for a long (talking on a hundred years) time he was the warden on a prison called the Maggot's Nest. Shinigami can't retire, so the options for those who turn out to be not psychologically suited for the job are either to be culled or to be imprisoned indefinitely. Most of the shinigami in the facility were criminally insane, and Kisuke pretty much came to realize that ... he was in a 'patient running the asylum' situation. He managed to stay free because he learned how to disguise himself and to stay just on one side of acceptable behavior.

It's also never explored in canon, but his sword (their swords, like Dean's now, are personal power totems) is themed with bloodplay, fireplay and bondage themes, so Darrow gives me some interesting room to play with that part of him where the original canon (which while quite dark was still aimed at 15-22 year olds) was prohibitive.

Also, bwah, I always worry that people get tired of a lot of mine because they are just talkers, Robin most especially, but I do love writing Robin off of a countering viewpoint, and Mike is always great for that.

[dynamicsymmetry]

Yeah, I mean... Mike is a sadist but with a huge masochistic streak, and these days he also tends to extremes, so he hasn't really found anyone he feels like he can plumbs the depths of that with in either direction, at least not since he had to stop doing that with Dean. And Dean would never have been able to return the favor. >_>

And of course he also has a Thing for blood. Oh boy.

I never, ever get tired of talky. More content is more to play off of.

Also, I'm really enjoying the thread between Kisuke and Daryl, which sort of came out of nowhere - he's so new and I'm still feeling him out, and Kisuke is nothing like anyone he would meet ordinarily in canon, which is one of the primary reasons I brought him in in the first place, so yay.

[respectorcist]

I've actually found that Kisuke is one of those characters that is really good for pulling others out of their shells in general so that other players have a good chance to explore pieces of their character's canvas, sort of like an in-character, in-narrative barometer for their personal opinions. He's often truthful, but not always, and he'll say things directly contrary to what he actually believes just to get a reaction.

The character is (obviously) based by the author on The Mad Hatter, but also takes a lot of his habits/mannerisms/personality from, of all places, pipe=smoking, green hat-wearing Atos Wirtanen, Finnish left-wing intellectual, journalist, member of parliament and cultural critic. And culture critic is basically how he performs in-universe.

[brontesaurus]

THERE'S A SECOND SEASON OF MUSHI-SHI?! :D

Gimel, eeeeeee.

Also clearly Urahara needs to recruit Rayo to handle the detail work he doesn't want to do. And maybe that's just me realizing that I need to find her things to do and I haven't been able to think about it because dear God grad school is eating my brain.

Also augh I wish apping Sunny was possible just so I could throw a young witch type at Remus for him to fuss over. She'd be so confused. "Wow, you're nice. No, really, my first magical lesson involved being sent into a soul-eating death forest."

[respectorcist]

Yes, it juuust started airing on April 4th, there are only 3 episodes out so far. Two of them are English subbed and available via Aniplex streaming at Crunchyroll, although Hulu also carries Mushi-shi so it may show up there later. It is just as lovely as the first season.

If Rayo wants a 'job' working at his after-hours shop he would welcome her >.>

Soul-eating death forest XD. That sounds terrible.

[brontesaurus]

That's srsly some of the best news.

And yes, I think Rayo would like that. >.>

IT WAS. It only appeared at night and I forget if she would have disappeared with it at sunrise, but her teacher was very clear. "Yeah, if you die in there, we've got an explanation ready for your parents. Good luck." She didn't go in alone, but all the same. First lesson. No Wingardium Leviosa for Leopard People.

[evildiorama]

ROBINNNNNNNNN

I can assure you that I adore threading with him every single time. I love how you play him and those are some of my most favorite threads. I was talking with Di when she was down here about how much I still love re-reading the learning to drive thread.

[thetidebreaks]

LOL we thread so often idek what to ask for but that we just keep tagging each other. xD I really am enjoying Rin's with Jodie though, I think they'd be an interesting pair to continue playing off each other. Also anyone else you wanted to throw at Jodie, she's always available. Also, moar Layfette with Jennifer and Riley, pls. (Riley really liked him, in her way, LOL)

I don't know much about Temari but you can always throw her at any one of mine. xD Also always up for private threads, just poke me.

[readyfuels]

I'm really confused, bc I swore that I commented on this when you posted it. BUT. I wanted to say that I really really really hope you don't drop Remus, bc I love reading him. Also because one day I want him and Stiles to meet.

Also, I need Raleigh and Spock.

Also, moar Lafayette and Stiles. Sorry if that's a weird tag pairing I JUST ENJOY LAFAYETTE SO MUCH and I'm pretty selfish.

[dsneyvoice]

Part of me wants to throw Spock and Zuko together just to see what would happen, since Zuko isn't exactly known for his logic XD

If we could come up with something for them, I'd love for Robin and Saffron to stir up some shit together if you're interested?

Kisukeeeeeeeeeee I kind of really love his dynamic with my lady~