Character Development Thread--Discussion

I'm wondering about that too. I think he said he was going to withdraw some time soon, but I figured he'd at least have his characters leave before he dropped out completely...

Well, his last post on Monday said he was going to pull out 'over the next few days'. I guess you could try a PM (which isn't going to help if he's not on TV Tropes), but I'd pull out on my own if there's nothing by Friday.

I actually just sent a PM myself.

RE: Departure post: I will have one done by the end of today. Apologies for the delay.

Never mind.

edited 21st Aug '14 6:17:08 AM by sabrina_diamond

If we're not outright declaring Archipelago dead, I'd like to know whether you intend to keep going or not, Yomegami.

I guess I'm interested in that too. I can keep posting with Howell and Iris for a little while, but if we're wrapping things up, or if Yomegami wants to step out, I've got an idea for a way to pull Joe out in one or two posts.

If we really are ending Archipelago, guess I should work on an ending post too.

Yeah, I'm gonna drop out. Probably not going to write farewell posts because frankly I can't be bothered to.

Bugger.

I... guess that means Archipelago is pretty much finished, then? Unless the Castle Boreas people want to go on by themselves?

I guess so. -shrugs- Oh well.

So, let's talk about our thoughts about Archipelago. Did anyone have a good time with it?

edited 22nd Aug '14 2:04:16 PM by Masterofchaos

I made no useful contributions, but I had a good time reading it.

I don't think the idea really worked, though.

I had a lot of fun early on and got quite a few things done for Kaguya and Hayate. Then stuff happened, motivational issues struck, and my interest in the thread pretty much tanked. All in all I'd say it's probably my least favorite out of the threads I've participated in thus far. Shame too, because early on it was actually my favorite.

I think the concept worked well enough if it let the thread last as long as it did, though apparently something needs work if enough people were saying it felt disjointed. I don't have any ideas for improvements right now, though.

I had some fun with the thread. Though, I have to say, I feel like I made George a little OOC (especially with the Iris/Howell thing that happened) and I wish I could've done more with Thomas's characterization. I feel like I made him a little bland.

I did enjoy the Jackson the duck thing; that was a lot of fun.

I don't have any ideas for improvements for the next thread either.

Well I guess that's that.

I certainly had a good time up until these past few weeks just due to the speed of things. I felt like I had to push a little more than I usually do—at least in the hotel group—for things to happen. I stopped doing that so much at day 2, and on the whole it just felt a lot harder to write. The characters were just sort of going through the domesticated motions, and the whole thing started to stagnate. I had set it up so that Mud could come back and keep bothering Jackson & co, but I thought I'd give that a break.

Well, I still feel like I got a good lot out of it. Iris was hardly a character before this thread. Howell's character was very different than what I had initially conceived (older and severely lacking in any defining traits besides his appearance). Their background still needs a lot of work though. Joe I didn't get as much out of, though I did explore some strange new avenues for his character, some of which I probably won't revisit to such an extent as was done in the thread. Mud was really fun to write for, and I got a bit of a better grasp on how he functions (which is still a little vague, both on purpose and just because I haven't hashed out many of the hard details) and of his loose reasoning. Duncan served his purpose (he is an actual character in my setting, if a minor one) though I don't think I defined him too well.

It's probably a good time to focus on some new characters anyway.

I'm completely fine with the world fair setting idea.

I'm wondering if I should bother finishing my Castle Boreas post or not.

Honestly, I want to punch myself in the face for saying this, but I might have to use Seilaan again next time. I got some stuff done with her, but not as much as I needed. Wilhelm should be all right for now. Probably. At least I had fun.

I liked the concept. I think it worked well enough. I'm not sure I got any useful character development out of it, though.

Sam is/was fun to write for, and I'm glad I got to introduce him/her, but he/she is still new and I have yet to nail down the character's attitude. I was originally going for someone resembling Jim Carrey's Riddler and/or Jack Nicholson's Joker, but - perhaps understandably - no-one seemed to want to engage with him... Female Sam is/was/will be much more toned down, and Sam lends itself well to strange and unexplained changes, so I'll see how things go, I guess.

Not sure about teenage Tamara, though. She spent a lot of her time butting heads with Terra's character, and overall, it was more fun to write her as a child, back in Mansion. The Nulbarak Island subplot stretched on for way longer than I had intended, and it's a shame that it ended when it did, because it was almost done.

Oh, and, as cool as Castle Boreas was, I'm not sure where Sam's chat with Henri was going, if anywhere at all...

edited 22nd Aug '14 2:57:00 PM by Blackfire667

I'm not entirely sure if thread length is a positive thing or not. I mean, yeah, it was kind of nice that I could join in briefly at the start, spend half a year away from the threads because of writer's block, and then come back, but (as I've said before) I think we've changed our expectations for "successful" thread length to something a little longer than it really needs to be. I mean, it kind of sounds like most people had less fun the longer Archipelago went on.

Why is this a bad thing? The interpersonal conflict was the most entertaining part of the Nulbarak Island plot for me, aside maybe from Kevin's sheer weirdness.

edited 22nd Aug '14 2:55:54 PM by nrjxll

It wasn't bad, necessarily, I just feel like she spent a lot of time being antagonized and not nearly as much time having other kinds of interactions...

So, Archipelago's done. This is a good time for it to finish up, I think.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how everything went, and I had fun. I got a hell of a lot done, and even totally restructured some stories with the addition of the Atonari race. I'm also happy that I was able to help some of you by bringing Castle Boreas, even if it didn't blow up like last time. Sometimes, I look at how long I've been here and feel like I'm not contributing enough, and seeing you guys say that something like Castle Boreas helped, or was even- God forbid -*cool*, means a lot to me. So, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I'm happy that I helped you, I'm happy that you helped me, and I hope we can all do it some more in the future, because this is what the CDTs are all about.

Snowy, Seilaan is second to Vince for the most CDT appearances. Archipelago is his tenth, and her ninth. They're high-attendance buddies. The CDTs and alpha/beta readers are good for catching different things but they both exist to help us out, so don't ever feel bad about needing needing more help with a character than some others, because that's what this place is for. And this goes to everyone: if you're bringing a character here to solve a problem or some other specific reason, don't hesitate to mention it so that we can attempt to get a bit of work done on that front.

So, onto my characters, all nine of them. Wall of text ahead!

Raphael didn't really get to do much on the Quantum Princess that he hasn't done already (although his short run in Inn more than made up for that), mostly because I misjudged the plot and probably shouldn't have brought a Wrong Genre Savvy Mad Doctor with a penchant for torture.

I think Marla seemed a little passive in not just Archipelago, but Ren as well. Since I know how her plot's going to go and she's comparatively minor, I don't think that's a huge problem, but we'll see. Kyros is pretty minor, too, and it's possible he won't appear outside of her story. Either way, it's back to drawing board with them both.

I haven't written Adrian since Character Titanic (and even then, he didn't get to do much and appeared at a point in his story before any of his now-defining backstory events occurred). He got off to a rough start in the Quantum Princess- if he seemed a bit disjointed, it's because I wasn't sure what traits of his I wanted to use. Back in the day, he had a pact with a demon and I kept waffling on whether I wanted to keep it or not, then I settled on getting rid of it because the poor guy has enough shit to deal with. He actually gave me a bit of trouble when he met Sam and Joseph because I was having issues conceptualizing how an arrogant jerk would actually act without crossing the line into Stupid Evil. Blackfire, Ryuhza, KC (if you're still around), anyone else who was lurk-following, if you don't mind, how did I do on this front?

Iris started out as a blank slate whose only trait is that she was one of the oldest known members of her race, which I thought would make her pretty cynical. I feel like the thing with her making sure Wilhelm wasn't going to get beaten if she refused his candy could have been handled a bit better, but I'm happy with pretty much everything after she took he and Beth out of the lab. And to be honest, by the time the three moved into the staff commons, I was really itching to get her out and into the next thread because I couldn't see her as subordinate to Vince anymore. She entered with three defining traits- looking weird, being 50,000 years old, and being cynical -and came out with her very own story. And that's awesome.

I'm not really sure Henri and Sam's conversation was going anywhere, either, but he needs some work, mostly to really nail his personality down. He seemed a lot more timid in my mind when I first brought him out, but now it's looking less plausible especially thanks to his thirty years on Earth where he could get more confident. That, or the cigarette calmed him down. Now it seems that the real way to get him to seize up would be to verbally threaten him. (Not threaten his family or physically threaten him- just verbally.) But that's a plan for next time.

I was stretched too thin to do much with Lazzaro. He started out as more of a Reasonable Authority Figure, but once he left the lab, I changed my mind and had his personality do a 180 that I outlined on the CDT character sheet. And I changed him from a medical doctor to a nanoengineer because I had too many life scientists and medical professionals floating around. I do, of course, have an idea for him next time to expand on his relationship with Iris. But, again, that's next time.

Cecille wasn't really intended to be a character. I knew from the start that Vince makes a point of addressing and thanking all of his employees by name, but I didn't have any other, more well-developed Atonari that would seem appropriate in that situation. If anything, she's more of a representation of his staff as a whole than an actual character.

I'm really, really happy with how I wrote Vince here. Iamatelle incident aside^* I still kick myself for not having him defend Iris because I kept thinking I had to take the straw variety of feminism into consideration whenever I have a female character interact with a guy, this is the closest he has ever gotten to how he actually is in his story. It only took me three whole years to realize that taking away everything he could possibly give a damn about out of fear that he could use his powers for the sake of those things and dominate everything isn't the way to go. Bringing Lily into the picture as well as the addition of the Atonari (many of whom dwarf him lifespan-wise) give him big motivations and a lot of people in his life to flesh him out, but this still opens another can of worms on how to best keep someone who is genuinely powerful, intelligent, and altruistic from having a hand in fixing all the world's problems. There are genuine hardships and disadvantages to this written into the plot of his story that I didn't get to show, so it's looking like I'm going to end up going back on my word, especially if I get more work done on his actual story and inevitably uncover more issues.

That finally brings me to Lily, who would benefit greatly from appearing without Vince, who overshadows/overrules her in diplomatic/official scenarios and suppresses her evil/nasty tendencies. I need to find the right point where she's genuinely a nasty ex-con whose nastiness can rub off on her husband, but not so nasty that Vince's taste in women is called into question. That still raises the perhaps more important concern of whether they actually behave like a Happily Married couple or not. And since it seems that we've agreed on the World's Fair being the next thread, I think I'll put her away until the thread after that.

edited 22nd Aug '14 10:24:20 PM by CrystalGlacia

Is anyone going to do any closing posts? I ask because otherwise I'm going to add it to our finished thread list in the CDT Trivia page.

Well, I'm not.

I might.

Well, I might as well ask, then. How would y'all describe Seilaan, assuming you followed that bit of Archipelago at all? Does she seem well-defined? You may have noticed that she's very different from thread to thread. Or at least the way I think about her does. It's very frustrating for one of your two narrators to be so nebulous, so that's why I'm always tempted to bring her back. I have secondary characters that are better-written than her and it frustrates me.

edited 22nd Aug '14 9:07:13 PM by SnowyFoxes

Honestly, I wouldn't worry that much about it. I've had my closest thing to protagonists appear in three - or four if you count Krajn's very brief participation in Archipelago - CDTs now, and every one of those appearances has been declared at best Broad Strokes for future CDTs due to a mixture of changing ideas about their characterization and simple dissatisfaction. I think it's actually rather understandable that your ideas about major characters would change much more often than the minor characters do.

Truth be told, while I didn't follow Castle Boreas that closely, I found Seilaan's renaming a lot more of a jarring change than anything about her personality (particularly because Wilhelm is still named Wilhelm).