Character Development Thread--Discussion

Sorry, thought I answered. Yes.

As I recall, ladytanuki's recent suggestions as to the layout of the ship contained both luxurious and bare places, so like was suggested earlier, there's no reason we'd have to pick one or the other.

I'm not really sure why we need to determine exactly how hard or soft sci-fi the setting is going to be, though. Internal consistency is unlikely to be a problem with the setting generally outlined in advance, and any details made up on the spot that seem to run contrary to what's been established are unlikely to affect Cast Herds beyond the one with the writer who made up the detail in the first place, so the rest of us can just ignore them if need be.

That said, I think we may be getting ahead of ourselves a little bit here. I'm pretty sure a bunch of people are still totally fine with a Like Reality Unless Otherwise Noted mysterious magical train.

I'm in the "Hard" school on this one.

As for luxury vs. utilitarian, why not both? Assuming the ship is of reasonable size, I would imagine it would have many narrow, dark halls and packed loading bays, along with fancy quarters for the Vi Ps.

I would be - but I've been under the impression that the spaceship was overwhelmingly favored.

I'm fine with either really - but at this point, since we've already begun to do some specific planning for Intergalactic Express, it'd be kind of a waste to go back to the train idea.

BTW, waiting for Snowy in Dream and Ryuhza in Frontier - however, since neither of them has characters directly engaged with mine just now, I may go ahead and post once sometime soon.

Sorry for not having posted already, I've been distracted with a lot of stuff lately- Trying to get back into roleplays (and probably failing to start another one), studying media works, and general real life stuff. However, having conversed with a friend, I realized something: I don't really know what anyone thinks of my characters.

If you're not aware there's a problem, then you can't fix it. If you're not aware of what's working, then you might end up removing it. Thus, before I work on my next post, could I get the opinions of the relevant people regarding my characters so far?

That's fine by me. I've been hitting a lot of little roadblocks, so for all I know I might not be able to post today after all.

I'd actually be interested in seeing how Patches story plays out. She has a ton of power and responsibilities, but not a lot of maturity to really handle them it seems, which provides a lot of potential conflict right off the bat. The characters living in her head can lend some commentary to further establish her way of thinking.

Regarding Friedrich's pictures disappearing and Heinrich mysteriously having no interest in what his children have been doing for the past seventeen years, I'm just throwing that out there so we have something to do in the clinic if we need ideas. If anyone else already has plans for the area I don't mean to disrupt them. Operation Make Friedrich Really Sad can be initiated at pretty much any time; just have someone go like "hey Heinrich don't you have kids or something?"

edited 18th Oct '16 1:18:55 AM by SnowyFoxes

I have a question for character's dream. How should I introduce my characters?

Most of the time it's easiest to just have your characters appear near a group that you're interested in interacting with, leaving the details of how and why they got there kind of vague until someone asks. The first post should contain a good description of what the character looks like, so you can put a link to it on the thread page that others can use for reference.

Some of the older tropers will probably have more tips as well.

@ Kkutwar: Patches is an interesting character. There's a lot of seemingly played-for-laughs weirdness going on, but I get the impression that there's a story behind it all, possibly with some darker elements. I want to find out what's going on with her.

Regarding the next thread, I'm biased towards more fantastic settings myself, so I like the spaceship idea. Njrxll has a point about common ground though. I'm picturing something similar to the Capital setting, with a mostly recognizable near-future Earth look, but with a few oddities (like presumably, artificial gravity and stuff) and the implication that the hidden tech (or magic?) behind it all is actually much more advanced than you'd think at first.

ok, so, how can i edit the page?

On Express: while I do find spaceships interesting, I'd much rather have an actual ambiguously magical train to develop my characters in.

@Kkutwar: your characters feel wacky, eccentric, out-of-place and very interesting to read about if you are into that sort of weird. Write on, person who is crazier than me, but try to tone things down if you want to tell a more serious story. Too much weirdness can be distracting.

edited 18th Oct '16 5:54:19 AM by EternaMemoria

Sorry for the delays and delays upon those delays, but there it is.

I'm fine with either a spaceship or an actual train. If it is to be a spaceship, Corvidae's suggestion that it be somewhat like Capital City sounds good to me.

edited 18th Oct '16 10:43:51 AM by Wolf1066

Well, when it comes to stories I always keep two things in mind: True Realism (because reality is far more complicated than super-serious & perfectly logical), and to always let my characters be themselves. Still, could you be more specific regarding toning things down?

@Novis & Corvidae: Precisely, she's an interesting character because of how weird she is. I rather not spoil her story, but I will say this- I don't do retcons. Still, it makes me really happy to see people being interested in Patches, as I do like her personal storyline.

As for Express: I really only care if there's sufficient freedom for characters and events, as I would love to write for one of my Greater Scope Villains. I also want a nice opportunity for Obliviously Evil Ura & her Beleaguered Assistant Temp.

What I think could be toned down is the scattered writing style for some of your Eldritch characters, as while it symbolises well their strangeness it also feels distracting. I am not talking about changing the personalities of ypur characters, just making thingsveasier for the reader.

Who specifically? Cause The Midnight Stitcher does barely have social skills whilst Blasphemy!Sanguine is just very tired. Though thoughts on Vita Exosso? I'll admit I genuinely wasn't expecting her to be doubted regarding the child in the pod being her little sister so... Yeah. Comments on the voices in Stitcher's & Noire's head would also be helpful.

It's unlikely I'll be able to post this week. I have a lot of real life stuff I need to handle and it's a little overwhelming.

And you've got a probably difficult post ahead, too. Take what you need.

@Ewolf: Click the "Edit Page" button at the top of the trope page, scroll to the place you want to change, start typing, and hit save. Look at other lines for reference of the kinds of things we'd like in a character blurb. Note that all characters are sorted by location and include a link to the posts where they're introduced and/or the post containing the most information about their appearance, so I wouldn't recommend that you add your characters to the page yet until they're present in the Dream thread.

Also, whenever you edit something that isn't your Troper page or a designated Sandbox page, make sure that your grammar and spelling are on-point or you may be edit-banned. (I'm not trying to scare you, people can and do get banned for grammar and spelling in wiki edits, and then they have to run their edits through a forum thread that isn't that active until they're deemed satisfactory before the ban can be lifted.) When it comes to basic formatting, the "Help" button at the top of the Edit Page screen is your friend. You can also create your troper page this way- go to any of your forum posts, click on your name, and you can use the Edit Page button up there to write a bit about yourself, keep personal notes, or practice wiki formatting.

As for your introductory post itself, we link to our characters' intro posts on the Dream II trope page. Read other people's intro posts to get an idea of how to do a character intro- there's lots of ways to do it.

edited 18th Oct '16 8:32:53 PM by CrystalGlacia

@Snowy Foxes.

I'm taking you up on your offer there with Henry signaling Friedrich into the kitchen.

edited 18th Oct '16 8:21:23 PM by Mrship21

Messed up and couldn't get around to Frontier today. I'll try tomorrow.

@Kkutwar:

I've not been playing much attention to your areas, but the Midnight Stitcher in is hsomewhat ard to read, and Vita's hammy behavior may make it harder to know when she is serious abd when she isn't.

But as I wrote, I haven't been playing much attention.

Just fyi, on the 22nd, I'm going on a date with my gf so...I'll be late in posting on that day.