Character Development Thread--Discussion

I've been wondering that myself. There's still a lot of work needing to be done on the Worlds' Fair idea.

School's the problem, I'm guessing. It is September, after all.

Personally, I was busy all yesterday — my cousin was back from the Navy on leave, so the family got together for a few drinks with him.

Anyhow, Night's arguments. Still not convinced, as per Elfhunter above. I mean, the possibilities are many. As well as Elfhunter's simply "powerful but insane Reality Warper", the theoretical character could be a Refugee from TV Land who, like literally every other character in the CDTs, gets to carry most or all of their native abilities. The character could be a Great Gazoo testing the ability of characters to endure attacks to their sanity.

Also, one may wish to take a few minutes to, as a thought experiment, prove that they themselves are not a fictional character. It may prove quite enlightening. In fact, I am currently considering the argument that it is easier for a fictional character to convince themselves they are not fictional, regardless of evidence, and without any sort of Idiot Ball, than it would be for a real person in the same situation to do so. Not quite ready to make that argument yet, it might be a dead end, but it has a certain ring of truth to it. (Said argument is probably completely irrelevant to this discussion, though. Just a bit of amusing pretentiousness to toy with.)

Anyways, it's all getting a bit off-topic. On actual matters of importance, I think Glacia's got the right idea; let the metafictional characters in on the auspices of being Refugees From TV Land, but the fourth wall remains painfully hard. (Ironically, both the Song and the Eyes and Teeth have actually looked straight through the fourth wall a few times. Just not in a way that's immediately obvious.) As a few people have mentioned, Sonzai, writing for Kevin, did a damn fine job here.

edited 3rd Sep '14 5:16:20 PM by KillerClowns

Yes, I agree with this wholly. Everything. Thank you for putting into words what I couldn't, sir.

Getting back to the Worlds' Fair, there probably remains some logistical work to be done regarding how locations are going to be tagged. I mean, you do a lot of walking around at a convention. Depending on the stall, you might not be staying there for very long, so it's not entirely practical to demarcate location by stall, nor is it practical to use something like [walking] or [whatever hall] with our intentionally hazy layout. Maybe we could instead use more vague location tags for specific areas such as [food court], [courtyard], or [entertainment] (assuming we're still going with Nrj's layout) and the names of the characters, so we at least know who's where? (Like [food court - Joe, Bob, Sally]. Or something.)

What else do we have? (I'm sure I'm missing things- my dad's driving me home from class and I'm on my phone.)

edited 3rd Sep '14 6:36:30 PM by CrystalGlacia

Keeping track of locations was one of my big concerns, yeah. Another is just how workable the whole idea of user-created stalls is actually going to be in practice. One issue I see with it is numbers: I think we've had about ten people regularly posting in this thread for a while now. I want to try and see if I can get Tera Chimera involved in the threads again, and as always we can hope for newcomers, but I still feel like it's going to require everyone putting extra effort into the threads to really create a lot of stalls and still maintain the usual amount of characters and activity.

Writer's block.

I feel like the condescendingly-worded guidelines folder has played at least some role in putting off newcomers, hence why I wanted to get it revised.

And I did mention that people can create stalls on the fly and leave them open for other characters to commandeer if they wish, as well as everything else in this post. But, you know, just how much of a feeling of activity can you make with a small number of core writers who are already busy with school and/or work?

I'm planning on participating in Worlds' Fair when it happens. I just haven't really had anything significant to say.

you know, after going through the guidelines now, I'm thankful I didn't read them before participating in the CD Ts.

I know them feels, bro.

edited 3rd Sep '14 6:43:16 PM by Elfhunter

A fair point. But on the other hand, what I was talking about was less a feeling of activity per se as it was a question of just how many stalls we'd be able to sustain at all. I feel like the thread needs a decent number if it's going to work the way you intended, and I'm not sure how easy it'll be to achieve that if we make them all up on the fly.

Well, that's good to hear, as I've been feeling your style of worldbuilding would work well with it.

I'll provide feedback for the changes to the guidelines folder in a little while. But in the meantime, one more thing I was considering: does anyone have any ideas for what might be a good setting for a casual thread that would give characters lots of things to do? One of my big problems with Inn has been that, while I've gotten a lot out of the character interactions, the setting itself has done very little for me. When it eventually ends, I'd like the successor to be a bit more engaging in that regard.

There's no hurry - I want Inn to keep going until at least the middle of the month - and I have a few ideas of my own. I just wanted people to start thinking about it.

edited 3rd Sep '14 6:49:57 PM by nrjxll

Part time job in a Wash and Fold perhaps? Or a sweatshop if we need more capacity?

But seriously though, how about participating in some sort of rebuilding effort after a natural disaster. Like, the characters found out about this disaster and decided to provide a helping hand any way they could.

That seems like it could go either way, but more in the serious direction- after large-scale natural disasters, the area can almost seem like a post-apocalyptic scenario with people doing things like looting houses, which can cause remaining homeowners to become paranoid. There's also things like sickness, rescuing stragglers, and distributing supplies to deal with; just look at New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. But it's worth filing away nonetheless.

Nrj, I know you liked Resort. Since I was only in Resort very briefly, I don't really remember much about it, so what do you think it had setting-wise that Inn didn't? But if you just look at a list of their accommodations, they're not that different. Hm...

edited 3rd Sep '14 7:11:26 PM by CrystalGlacia

Well, part of the issue with Inn for me is that it's just too rooted in real-world concepts I have no familiarity with, and which lost their importance anyway after Yomegami dropped. But I did feel Resort had a lot more to do than Inn, although I guess that may come down partially to the more rapid character circulation.

That said, I'm not actually looking for something along the Resort model. Maybe another time, but Inn was indeed kind of like that, and I'd prefer some variety even if I wasn't dissatisfied with Inn. That's partially why I'm looking for ideas from other people.

I can see that; I've noticed that we sometimes try to emulate Resort with our casual threads and it doesn't always work out so well. Of course, my mind always goes back to resort-type places when I try to think of 'broad, yet relaxed' settings.

An open-air shopping concourse? But that might just be my affinity for user-defined settings talking...

edited 3rd Sep '14 7:35:03 PM by CrystalGlacia

Anyways, Nrjxll, to very briefly step back. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you weighed in properly on Glacia's proposed compromise. Does it suit you? Or are you going to stick to your previous plan of "just avoid them as necessary?" It's looking likely that the CDTs will remain large enough for that to be reasonable, especially once we get these guidelines hammered out.

Sorry I don't have any unique suggestions at present. And, for no particular reason but sloth, the CDT rules revision page once more for those who need it and don't care to scroll up. *Adds to watchlist.*

Like I said earlier, I'm sort of inclined to just stay out of that argument. I'm still not at all sure I like the idea of "metafictional" characters participating, but in the three years I've participated in the threads there's been about as many metafictional characters, so I'm not inclined to get particularly worked up about a hypothetical problem right now.

Okay, so the revised guidelines:

• For point two (the one about spelling and grammar), perhaps we should link to a source of help with that in case anyone ever feels they need it?
• I think we ought to strongly encourage people to add their characters with a link to whatever post they were introduced or described in to a thread's page. I find it really helps to keep track of things.
• I'm not sure we need the qualification/explanation for the bit about taking control of other people's characters. Better to just give a flat "don't" there, I think.

This bit was marked as questionable, but I definitely think we should put it in there. We've have drama with some people in the past about their difficulty in grasping the cooperative nature of the threads, so putting something to try and forestall that happening again is a good idea.

edited 3rd Sep '14 10:11:35 PM by nrjxll

Spelling/grammar: I was also thinking of mentioning that if you're writing for more than one character, you should should start a new paragraph when someone new speaks, in addition to a link on English help. I feel like if I add the first thing, I need a few more details or something. I dunno.

Adding yourself to the thread page: yes, I thought about adding that late last night, but homework and sleep and stuff.

Controlling other characters: I actually remember the incidents that prompted the creation of that point. Back in the day, people were a lot more relaxed about that stuff, until Castle, as I recall. (As a personal example, someone took control of one of my characters and had him do the opposite of what I would have had him do.) The point's existence is probably why nobody new has tried anything like that, or they're intimidated by all of the work that we recommend they do before they try. The only examples I can think of since then have occurred with Snowy's Seilaan and Taiyin getting piloted by Aqueos and Leung Bai Fang, and Terminal Optimist, respectively, who she said know her work pretty well.

That being said, you should still be allowed to do it with the writer's permission- if someone wants to subject their character to that, that's their problem. One potential reason why one might let someone else use their character would be to see where that person takes their character, and for it to work without raising too many eyebrows in-thread, the borrower would have to think about characterization and those other things mentioned in the point anyways. So it probably needs a reword anyway. Thoughts, anyone?

Planning for interference: but does it need more detail, or is it good as it is?

And my biggest question regards tone- I don't want the guidelines to be condescending. Do they come across as friendly, or at least inoffensive?

edited 4th Sep '14 8:23:11 AM by CrystalGlacia

If there's anything that could use clarifying in my last post, feel free to ask. If I just didn't provide enough of a lead-in for anything that Marie could respond to, sorry about that.

Inn has been at a dead stop for days. I wouldn't count on it picking up again.

RE: new rules. The metafictionality discussion's tone is somewhat hostile. (Not surprising, considering the points are somewhat hostile to it.)

We still have a one-character-per-person rule, which frankly, we should let go of; if someone is running too many characters we can always point it out some other way, but I don't think anyone currently active in the threads besides Ryuhza has made a point of running a single character for a long time.

My own personal rule is that whatever character needs work most is the only one to see action for a given thread, just to keep myself sane, but I can understand getting rid of the official rule.

I made a revision of the whole folder in the sandbox; it's the second folder on the page. I placed it alongside the original rather than replacing it because not only does the revision significantly change the wording and formatting of many of the points, I also didn't want to deal with fishing into the history if we need the original for something.

The point I wrote to replace that one (#2 under The Nitty-Gritty of Participating) instead advises against running more characters than you can write for with reasonable depth. I also just added a point just below that one about making sure to add your characters to the thread's trope page.

edited 4th Sep '14 6:04:06 PM by CrystalGlacia

Inn's only being held up by a couple of people that I can see. (Mind you, it also only has a couple of people at all). I've been waiting for Gault for a couple of days, for instance.

And yeah, I thought the one-character-at-a-time rule had already been dropped.

I'll be at my cabin for the weekend, a bit unlikely to be able to post. Anyways, a few random thoughts.

• Point 4 in the Nitty-Gritty could be pared down to "do I have permission from the character's author?" It seems implicit such permission won't be given if the other doesn't know what they're doing.
• Another thing to possibly add under point 6 of the Nitty-Gritty might be a suggestion to take a bit of time to exchange PMs with a troper you're likely to be battling a lot in-thread, both to establish guidelines and to establish a bit of camaraderie to keep feelings from getting hurt.
• For big things point 2, worth mentioning that characters need not follow the same rules in their speech if that's not part of their voice?

Oh, and as for the World Fair idea, I'll probably have WA set up a stall, since it sounds like we need volunteers. About time they remembered that their main source of income is agricultural biotechnology, not transdimensional plundering. About how big should these things be?

edited 4th Sep '14 8:09:48 PM by KillerClowns

As big (or small) as you think you can handle.

So is Inn dead after all? I'm still trying to get Gault to post, but I'm kind of losing hope, and anyway I'm not sure what the point would be if no one else is posting.