Character Development Thread--Discussion

Try writing it first and see what happens?

Seriously, though, those questions aren't what this thread is for. This is basically a roleplay discussion thread. But you're welcome to add this god to Character Dream II, Character Frontier, or Frontier's successor and get some live help.

@ladytanuki: This is hardly an in-depth response, but I find Nemaforte to frequently be hilarious.

So I'm back. The date was wonderful!

Now...new person, please understand that CDT is a roleplay and not actually a discussion about character development. BUT, if you want to test out your character, you can try Dream II or wait until the new thread pops up! We always like newcomers.

I was planning to wait for Kkutwar to make a new post, but now I think I will instead post tomorrow and have Sentinel or the spirit interact with Friedrich (the Graveyard one of course).

EDIT: I lied. Posted today, may post tomorrow depending on what Friedrich does.

Oh, and @ladytanuki, I liked Sinistra and Friedrich, even if you write in a setting that is alien to me. I haven't accompanied Sinistra in particular very closely, but when I did read her I enjoyed it. However, her (apparently) uncaring attitude in relation to the victims of the Manor earlier made me feel less sympathetic towards her, and I still kinda feel that Gabe should have burned down the Manor.

I am still curious about Friedrich, and will refrain from making judgments for now, and can't say much about the others.

BTW, earlier you commented you expected him and Sentinel to become rivals. Why is that? Is it because of her role as "Matron of Medicine"? Because I really wanted to foreshadow that her position(s) involve darker things than just that, and I now think that the hints I dropped early on were not enough, which made me go much more obvious with her incantation, something I now regret.

edited 23rd Oct '16 2:38:44 AM by EternaMemoria

Huh, well that is definitely reassuring. That's exactly the sort of tone I wanted to set with Sinistrina, that of a sort of ambivalence, where one's not sure whether to sympathize with her or not. In the story I'll be writing very shortly with her and Friedrich, I want to set her up as The Woobie who proves that Dark Is Not Evil, but still has some unsettling characteristics and sometimes dips into villainy - the whole uncaring about manor victims' well-being for instance (though said manor won't hold much importance in the story), and being a lich who can control the dead doesn't help either. I even had a friend warn me about making such a character too unsympathetic, especially since her role in the story is kind of like a Big Good, which is why I gave her the backstory and occasional moments of caring. So yeah, thanks for letting me know.

The rivalry between Friedrich and the Sentinel is, as you guessed, mainly based on the association with medicine, but also her ability to transform plays a factor. Since Friedrich comes from a world where healing does harm, and since a lot of effort was put into causing him to even exist, let alone hold himself together (possibly with some Pinocchio-esque wish to become a real boy or at least a non-broken doll), you can imagine why he'd be a tad resentful of her. There's also the fact that the Sentinel seemed a bit apprehensive upon seeing him as an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette at first, which I'm not sure was due to some prior experience she had with similarly-appearing beings (apparently not ones made of porcelain though). Although, they may not be complete rivals, as evidenced by Friedrich's amusement at her mentioning of spirits and the nature of her transformation sequence.

Anyway, in Frontier, I didn't post with Nemaforte (the hilarious one - interestingly, I had a similar impression of Scents), since I want to give Wolf a chance to have Teri, Wolfe, and Gwion respond to Scents' question about the herbs.

edited 22nd Oct '16 7:42:24 PM by ladytanuki

Well regarding Noire, she genuinely thinks/believed Ashleigh & Phoebe are "masquerade-unawares" (think Muggle), thus her bout of Exposition is actually Justified- The organization she works for, Eldon, seeks to break the artificial & enforced masquerade in their world.

Regarding the terminology and so forth, I didn't think I was allowed to go on explanatory rants here- Though I'll also admit, it would be extremely silly to desperately avoid using said terminology as well when there's no In-Character reason to do so. However could you explain which stuff confused you the most?

Regarding The Midnight Stitcher's self-preception: Basically, he's been pretty unhappy with his existence since day one, having to regularly run & fight to prevent himself from being destroyed (not killed, destroyed). Thus practically offended and confused by how chipper Vita seems to be in his eyes, thinking she's just like him.

Not entirely sure what you're meaning about the emphasis of Stitcher's eye changing, so could you elaborate? It would also help a lot if you explain what exactly you want to see from Noire & Stitcher regarding their personalities. I would say poking at Noire's explaining away the Scanner's result is a surefire way to learn something- Whilst Stitcher can just be flatout asked questions and he'll likely answer.

Though speaking of Vita, she's actually proud to be petite- Honestly A-Cup Angst just seems irrational to me, yet I was a little worried someone would assume that when she mocked Ethoya. Still, given I pretty much created her on the spot, I would say she's already came quite a way- Though with the non-Eldritchian menace that just showed up, Stitcher is gonna end up halting his pursuit of her.

As for Creepy Doll!Friedrich, I've just haven't been able to put him together yet. Doesn't exactly help everything in The Graveyard is just one big Unusually Uninteresting Sight before Patches. Regarding me posting, sorry for not having done so sooner- Was pretty focused on God Eater. Still, I'll definitely post something for Patches later today.

That's actually really satisfying to hear, since while my story is frequently supposed to be funny I feel like it never manages to come across in the CDTs. Thanks!

Made a very small edit to my graveyard post.

When are we likely to get movement on the lab scene in Frontier?

Tonight or tomorrow.

Yeah, I found her and Iraal's reactions to all the thread shenanigans to be pretty funny. Like Iraal's Pardon My Klingon moments and overall exasperation whenever something odd comes up in the wagon, their reaction to riding horses, and just about everything Scents does because come on, how can a multi-eyed Petting Zoo Person in a suit of armor not be funny?

Anyway, I'll be following the threads pretty closely for the next week, but through all of November, my ability to post will definitely be compromised thanks to Na No Wri Mo, so just a heads up. Once I'm done with that (so early December), I'll be introducing my Orenyan musical quartet into Dream II, along with a new location. Said location will be a twilit grand hall open to the outside, where a ball is taking place. After a while of being together, I plan to have one of said quartet stay there while the other three go to other locations (I definitely plan on sending one to the Heart Forge and another to the Ritter Clinic; not sure about the remaining one), so start thinking of any other characters you might want to put there if you like.

edited 23rd Oct '16 5:48:41 PM by ladytanuki

Made a small edit to my Dream II post, just as a heads up in case anybody in the Barn is working on a post already or would like to edit theirs. The things that shower thoughts do to writers.

I wanted to try to get a Dream post in today, but I'm really haven't been in a good place lately. Sigh.

It looks like I won't be getting that Frontier post up until tomorrow after all. And that'll be later in the evening since I have class and work in the morning and I have to get groceries in the afternoon. I always forget to factor in the time lost on Sundays when I leave my parents' house and get back to my apartment.

My posting rate is probably going to be a little bit stunted this week. Got a lot of things due and a test on Friday that I know I'm going to have to study my ass off for.

Sorry to hear that :(

Hey Will and Corv, you can post ahead of me. I have writer's block lol.

And once again I find myself in a position where I'm not able to make all the posts I know I need to. In this case, I'll have to do a rain check for Gon and Ari in Dream II and Nemaforte in Frontier, since the post I just did with Friedrich took a little longer than anticipated. I think Nemaforte will be my next priority as there's more than one person waiting on her.

Speaking of Kkutwar posting, both Eldritch Factory locations are in need of some attention.

EDIT: Okay, I lied. I just couldn't resist posting with everyone's^note read: my favourite extraterrestrial drug dealer.

edited 24th Oct '16 10:33:18 PM by ladytanuki

I have this problem with Arthur where every time I write him being reflective, it just ends up being a depressing self-pity-fest. I don't know if this is because Aphelion is about a really depressing situation that he has no choice but to invest all his time and energy in trying to solve, because there simply isn't more to his character, or some combination of the two. Everyone in Aphelion has a pretty detailed backstory, and Nymue and Arthur's are particularly intricate because their past relationship and the events leading up to their enlistment are pretty significant to the plot. So I'd like to think that I know them pretty well... and then I try to write. And it just keeps going back to the same goddamn thing. I don't think I've learned anything from using him in a thread.

At the same time, maybe it's kind of fitting. Aphelion from its conception was meant to have a nasty streak of cynicism. The Alliance is a dystopia, all the main characters are united by their experiences of violent ableism, a bleak situation has put them on edge, they fight, and they aren't afraid to hurt each other. I know that sounds like a chore to read. Sometimes it's hard to write, too. A lot of this stuff hits way too close to home for me. This ugly side is important to the story I'm trying to tell, but it's supposed to add bitter tones to a complex sauce, not take over the whole dish. If that makes sense. So I do worry a lot about the balance.

TL;DR: It was a mistake to use Arthur in a thread and you will probably never see any more Aphelion characters in the threads. I'm sorry for not thinking this through.

We all do it sometimes, and the omnipresent time crunch of the CDTs doesn't help.

Sure hasn't helped Vince and Tsadro; look at all the retcons and soft reboots we've had to do because I tried to do intricate stuff with them that I hadn't even practiced, under a time crunch. I learned very little about Tsadro as a character from using him in Frontier other than he's intricate enough to need lots of out-of-CDT practice, and that most of my characters are likely to be in the same boat. Enough that I'm probably not going to add any more of my characters to the threads for a while, even for fun. The threads aren't always that great for super-intricate characters and situations.

It reads to me like Aphelion in particular, at this point in the game, needs outside critique, not the CDTs. Maybe Arthur and his story will be able to show more shades of themselves without the CDT time crunch, the 'can't-really-take-writing-back' nature of roleplay-format stories, and other people's characters interfering.

edited 25th Oct '16 4:03:28 AM by CrystalGlacia

Still quite busy overall, but I'll try working on a post later today.

Now that I'm working more seriously on a post for Dream, I'm running into a bit of a problem - I'm having a hard time figuring out why Mazra should remain involved in this highly awkward argument rather than making up a lame excuse and going outside (which I don't want). She's not really invested enough.

What if she remains quiet for the current post cycle? Development can be had in the way that she processes this conversation, without even doing or saying anything in particular, right?

But given how this is currently going, I don't expect people other than Vince, Min, and Varris to want to add much at all to this cycle.

edited 25th Oct '16 6:07:59 PM by CrystalGlacia

Still hoping to work on more of a post tonight, but I'm also planning to write for an extra area, and I don't know exactly how long that's going to end up being. And before I can really set into that, I've got to finish a school project and two assignments. I've been falling asleep at 'normal people' times lately, so all this adds up to... I really doubt I'll have anything finished by tonight, but do know that I'm trying.

I mean, Min did make a backhanded remark about Mazra during her rant. Maybe Mazra could respond to that? I dunno, she probably has some opinion on the matter.

I'm recently employed and adjusting to the new schedule, I may be slow to post.