saveyourbrain | OOC DISCUSSION MEME;

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discussion meme

OOC DISCUSSION MEME;

Save the Earth requires a good deal of thought to apply into. Because of this, it can't hurt to get some input into your ideas or to get some idea of how other players will feel about them.

This post is exactly for that. Think of it as a creativity workshop where there are no stupid questions, bad ideas can get weeded out and good ones can get fed properly. However, this space is for constructive criticism only. Please remain mindful of that.

How it Works:

Put forward your idea for a character you wish to apply. Point out the parts you like most, the holes you want help with, the parts where you can't seem to make up your mind either way. Consider what sort of goals you'd like to achieve in the game, why you think the character is a good fit and what sort of roles they'll be able to fulfil. Don't be afraid to let it all If you have an app in progress, you might want to link to it. Similarly, linking to a resource to let others know the preincarnated character better might be a good idea.

Then, discuss with others! Hopefully you'll be able to make your vision more complete and understand the game better. Potentially you could formulate future CR or even pre-game CR.

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Asura of Soul Eater, is the Demon God of Madness, who exudes a power to drive the entire world into insanity. He is the living embodiment of terror, and is appropriately enough both scared of everything and absolutely terrifying himself. He has mood swings between being a total freaking out freak and being a suave, calm philosopher. Very pro freedom and considers all forms of order to be tyranny, so he'd rather destroy all types of structure and rules from the world... And if people keep finding his hiding places, he'd like to blow up the world. Absolutely bug nuts and kind of an idiot. Also very pretty! Until he does this.

Now, since we already have a fair few villainous characters (and I'm playing Shendu for lords sake) but what I want to do is have him be the kindest, sweetest, shyest guy you can imagine in his reincarnation and kind of a tragic little man who would probably never have any friends or even leave the house if it wasn't for this whole crisis. Possibly one who, thanks to getting a spattering of very effective powers as his early Echoes, kind of has to get into danger for the sake of others. I really like the degree to which he would really be struggling to try and pretend to be a hero, actually being a coward and slowly developing into an absolute monster with apocalyptic desires. And if he has himself some real friends by that point, getting afraid of receiving more Echoes.

A bit of a concern of mine is that, as a shy and cowardly as he would be he'd need people to prod and coddle him now and then. I can imagine it'd be a bit of a pain for others.

H O W E V E R I am currently caught between that idea and having him already be evil. Specifically, an as yet uncaught serial killer. Instead of being the sweet guy who really shouldn't have to do this sort of stuff, he'd be a natural at it the messy side and probably it'd be really unnerving to know him. I kind of like the idea of him being sort of barely tolerated by most people because no one likes Asura. Especially those law and order types we have around. Problem with that is... well, no one would want him around ICly. I might try to balance it out by having him basically be his cool persona without any of the terror and attempt to make him be weirdly charismatic for it.

I dunno. Thoughts? Hit me.

Naturally, me being me, options for a second app started running through my head the moment Felix's hit the post. Some of these are:

Sazed, from Mistborn. He's fascinated me ever since I first read the books, and I desperately want an opportunity to play with the Metallic Arts somewhere. Problem is, I don't quite have his voice nailed down yet, and I don't have a PB. I'm told other people have found fixing the latter to help with the former, but thus far I've had little luck. There's very little canonical description of Saze (or, indeed, of most of the characters) - he's tall and stretched out, with a long flat face. He's also got a shaved head and ears that are stretched out for lots of earrings, but those would possibly not be so essential for starting out in StE. I've got some tentative thoughts about reincarnating him as part Indian, though I'm not hugely attached to that. Mostly I just want an excuse for his parents to have had distinctly different religions.

Applejack, from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The problem here is, I'd want to have her reincarnated as a pony. But I don't know horses. I could probably scrounge an Echo somewhere to rearrange her biology into I-can-hoofwave-stuff territory, but I doubt her owners would fail to notice this. She could possibly escape at about the same time, but I doubt a horse wandering around trying to avoid humans is going to have much opportunity to get Echoes.

Fluttershy, from the same canon, I could do more easily - I see no problem with starting her as a human, and I've been playing her elsewhere for a bit under two years now. But... I'm not entirely sure that a Fluttershy would be an excellent fit for StE. Also I kind of despair at the thought of trying to write a history section where literally any mention of family would have to be marked as headcanon.

Edited 2013-05-01 22:07 (UTC)

AHEM HI. Effy here, resident player of Robb Stark, and I am thinking about bringing in two characters! (Sorry, Harry. Maybe next year?)

Grantaire is from Les Miserables, aka that book/musical/movie where everyone you love DIES ON THE BARRICADES or FALLS OFF A BRIDGE INTO THE SEINE or DIES OF HEARTBREAK. Basically everyone dies and Grantaire (aka R, because his name sounds like "Grand R") here is no exception. For those who haven't read the book (which I can understand because holy shit that thing has more pages than LOTR), he is one of Les Amis de l'ABC (the Friends of the ABCs, "ABC" sounding a lot like "abased" which is French for "oppressed", Hugo loved his puns yes), which is a group of student revolutionaries, but unlike the rest of Les Amis, Grantaire's a cynic. He's just there to get drunk and snark at everyone, and also because Enjolras is like the one thing he believes in. They're even compared to Orestes and Pylades at one point. Dammit, Hugo.

Anyway, I actually have two ideas for his reincarnated self, aka Renaud Brewer. The first is for him to be a somewhat less cynical college student who participates in rallies and stuff because he actually believes in them, not just because of Enjolras, and he can totally control his drinking yep. Network events and echoes, however, would basically break what little idealism he's managed to build up. And then he'd turn to drinking all over again, except this time it's worse.

The second is for him to be a cynical college drop-out. Which is pretty close to canon, welp, but I think he'd be even more cynical about things because, again, there's no one around for him to believe in. And then the echoes would push him in the other direction, because even now he still believes in Enjolras, even if he doesn't quite know who the guy is. (He will still be a drunk, though.)

Two concerns of mine is that, welp, Hugo didn't even give him a first name. And idk how the mods would feel about me headcanoning his life prior to the June Rebellion of 1832 because of course Hugo didn't give us anything more than hints about that. The other is that I'm sort of planning to give him the French language as his first echo, triggered by somebody calling him R. He wouldn't know what to do with it other than ace high school French, but is it still okay?

Korra is from Legend of Korra. For those of you who have no idea what LoK and its prequel series Avatar: the Last Airbender are about, she's the Avatar, aka the one girl in all the world--no wait, WRONG CANON. I mean, she's the one bender in all the world who can manipulate (aka bend) all four elements: water, earth, fire and air. She is also a teenaged girl.

I have most of her reincarnated self (Kendra Eaton) hammered out already, but I'm mainly concerned about the whole Avatar thing. Okay, I'm mostly just planning on giving her a small dose of firebending at first thanks to touching the snake statue on a dare, but other than that there's a lot of "good god how is this shit going to go down".

I'm also pretty concerned about what age she'll be. I mean, playing her as a high school student is pretty tempting, but at the same time I like the idea of playing her in her twenties, midway through college, and already a fair bit more mature than she is in canon. But I already have one college student and another (if he won't drop out of college) in the works, so uh. GUYS. HELP.

Actually can probably help you a bit with the concerns about your Les Mis character. I admit, I'm not canon familiar, but I ran into a few of the same roadblocks.

See, Leonhardt here has absolutely no canon whatsoever for any of his life before a certain event that happened likely after he turned 16. Yeah, I don't even have a canon age for him. What little canon gives me tells me it is likely far from normal. I was asked why so much headcanon, but once I explained my reasoning and why I picked what I did they were cool with it. So just do that in advance. Make sure you put your headcanon in italics and explain why you have so much and if you have any basis for your choices give that as well.

Also, I don't see a huge concern for having more than one college student. Have them be studying in different fields, that's probably enough. I get the impression the school is pretty large (and people seem to be playing it like that) and I can tell you from personal experience with a large university, you aren't going to get to know students in your classes that well in the vast majority of classes, especially in the GED stuff. The classes are just too big for that. The people I knew best were the ones I did extracurricular activities with, not the people in my classes (though some of us did try to get classes together when possible). So it's easy to have two college students move in different circles as long as their overall interests vary enough. So I think you'll be fine there if you want to have Korra be a college student.

Thanks for the advice! And yeah, I'll keep that in mind while I hammer things out for both of them.

I really like the sort of...shy character that ends up going totally insane and evil type of character, so the first idea puts a big grin on my face. I can see the serial killer being interesting too, though, particularly since I don't think we've quite got anyone like that yet. But the first option would definitely be good for CR...

IDK this probably isn't all that helpful but I wanted to at least support this idea! I'm mostly canon blind but I really like the character concept. If I had to pick one version, I'd pick the first option (since...yeah, I love characters like that, lol) but I think both would be fun to have around!

This is Blue, here - and for the future, I'm strongly considering balancing the goody-goody Anthony and the classy Rarity with the troublemaking maniac Sho Minamimoto from The World Ends With You.

I've so-to-speak drawn up a reincarnated persona for him also - in all likelihood a smart-as-a-whip but underachieving delinquent high school senior who enjoys stealing garbage, Dadaism, and doing math for fun, and lives with his father who runs a ramen shop thanks to the Another Day omake. I'm unsure how loopy he ought to start out and how much worse he'll get as he regains Echoes (for example, would he start out with his trademark math-speak - would it have been a thing that even in canon he started doing while he was alive for the sake of sheer zetta swag, or after he became a Reaper and would've gotten increadingly power-hungry and bombastic?), but that's a minor thing.

One thing that is holding me back on him is the nature of his powers - they don't do much in the physical world, though the ability of flight would be useful. Even Noise, which are dangerous on the Underground/spirit plane only affect the not-undead as "bad energy".

I've also picked up a muse for Buttercup from The Powerpuff Girls, which unlike Sho would also be doing another small part for the reincarnation gender representation - but on the other hand, her powers are out of control, and before she gets them, people already fussed about Toshiro - surely they'll refuse to let a petite elementary schoolgirl get into things.

Finally, I also considered Zevran Arainai from Dragon Age, but I have never played him before and his character type is certainly a quick far step out of my comfort zone. And also, again, it's raining men. I've also wanted to play Leliana in the past, but ha ha I've already got Anthony and Rarity.

Any thoughts or help would be appreciated!

I apologize for not replying to your other comment with my thoughts sooner!

I do understand waiting it out for Fluttershy to weigh whether or not a good niche could be found for her in StE, but on Applejack, in my application for Rarity, I was allowed to give her three starting Echoes to make it convenient for her to communicate with the rest of the network with an explanation for my asking for them in the very end, and was approved. If you think it may work, I would expect you to be able to do the same - maybe request one Echo for sapience, one for understanding speech, one Echo for speaking herself, and one Echo for altered physiology; and say that after that fourth one she ran away from the farm so that her owners wouldn't make a scene and have her ask for help on the network?

'Course, a trouble there would be thinking of and/or choosing causes for that many early Echoes, but I hope that's a start!

That's fine. This is possibly a better place for hashing out such issues anyway.

Certainly an idea. For that matter, if sapience comes from a years-ago canon recurrence, I could probably justify learning to understand English naturally, which would save an Echo (meaning I wouldn't need to ask for more than you did). Possibly go for literacy rather than speech, since I'm not sure how well water-trough-style connection would work outside the farm or how good at video/audio a patch of ground with numbered piles of leaves would be...

It's been a very long time since I read Les Mis. Possibly I should remedy this. (Hugo, why you got so many words? And so many of them about tangents?)

Anyway. Personally, I'd probably take Big R the dropout route. Which is kind of odd for me to say, but I prefer the idea of Echoes generally making someone better rather than worse.

I have nothing specific about Korra, but I'll note that I've had the same "how would I Echo an Avatar?" line of thought. Purely as a thought exercise, in my case, since I'd have trouble giving a voice to anyone but maybe Toph or Jinora.

I'll admit, my knowledge of TWEWY is limited, I suck at the game so I didn't get very far to know what Sho's powers are, but do have a potential idea. since Noise to most people is "bad energy" as you said, how about his powers work on energy? So they can affect things like electricity, gas, other people's magic, etc.

Another option could be they only work on non-humans.

As far as Buttercup goes, remember that we have a lot of leeway with the reincarnations. You could always make her be a bit older, but childish in personality still. More immature rather than actually young could work. Then as she gains more echoes and power she can get younger.

Edited (typo) 2013-05-02 16:59 (UTC)

This is Krystal, and for my second character, I'm torn between two options.

One is Loki, from the Eddas/myths. Would have his reincarnation be a woman of about 25 who desperately wants to be famous. What for, she's not sure, but she knows she wants to be a STAR. Unfortunately, she has no potential, and only mediocre talent. At anything. She works as a stagehand at Locke City's big movie studio because if she can't be in the movies yet she can at least be in the business, right?

She has no patience to be a writer, no dedication to train her voice to be a singer, no talent for delivering lines, and terrible luck.

I'm not sure where her echoes/development would take her yet. I'd wait and see in-game. But I do know that she has the potential to be very dangerous -- if she realizes that she'll never be famous legitimately, she will settle for infamy, and would become a high-profile murderer or possibly a terrorist. Because at least then people would know her name, right?

Thoughts? I need to work on incorporating what her memories of the myths will do to her, because her initial thoughts will be "god dammit I don't want to go crazy / who cares about Norse mythology." But it'll definitely add to her drive to make herself known, and she'll become more and more willing to do underhanded things to get what she wants.

Also flying shoes.

Second option is Kay Curtis, an OC. In his canon he's a brash, loud, violent teenage werewolf with a couple of murders under his belt. He's his own worst enemy, a huge mess of instincts and conflicting desires and pride and addiction and a need for friends. Here, I'd make him a comparatively well-adjusted coder/hacker who has a problem with escaping into video games, quiet but still proud and competitive, the kind of guy whose anger burns cold and will get you back a week later. Viciously. But if you make friends with him/ping him as someone to protect, he'll go to the ends of the earth for you.

Basically his development would be

"suddenly I have an explosive temper??"

"suddenly I'm ripped??"

"suddenly I want to kiss everyone???"

"WHY DID I PUNCH THAT GUY THAT WAS DUMB"

"aaaaaaugh"

Thoughts? Got a preference re: which character you'd rather see?

...so Anghel is kind of perfect for this game. He's a weirdly intense bird who believes he's the reincarnation of a fallen angel, and he maybe kind of is. Spends a lot of time and energy holding back the "fallen" bit and fleeing when he thinks it could get loose, gets other characters to remember their past lives in relation to him.

Or maybe he's not. He puts out hallucinogenic pheromones and is arguably schizophrenic. This past life is basically an intentional parody of a young teen's Mary Sue stage, all flash and things that resonate when you're that age and seem absurd when you're older.

But maybe it doesn't matter, since he's a belief-based reality warper and can intuit things about souls and the future, and has a very skewed but ultimately accurate view of events. Maybe he might as well be a fallen angel - maybe he's the reincarnation of something, and with his powers perceives and handles it through the lens of a teenager with a Mary Sue version of himself.

Just trying to work out how I'd handle him.

Why hi, folks! I'm Dassa, and looking to apply here, and planning on bringing in Nephenee from the Fire Emblem franchise. Here's her wiki page for those unfamiliar: http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Nephenee

I'm a little unsure what to do with her, though. I've played an AU for her before, with her as a spoiled rich girl instead of a very shy, poor farm girl, but I'm...rather unsure if I can pull that off for an extended time, as it's pretty much the opposite of me and I can't help wondering if it would burn me out :/ This is the first time I've made a dedicated AU, so I'm uncertain how to start.

Any help is appreciated, and thank you in advance!

Don't forget that a character doesn't have to be from Locke City at all, they could easily have moved here for various reasons. She could have grown up in a rural area and come to Locke City for college perhaps. Maybe she got a scholarship that made the idea of going to school in a big city sound appealing, or maybe she just wanted to live in a city where she can more easily blend in with the crowd or just hated her rural town and wanted to get away. You have a lot of possibility with that and she'd not be alone with not being from the city. My other character is from another city in the same state and came to Locke City for college because it was a nice compromise between being able to move out, but still being close enough to visit her family. A suburb could also work if you don't want to go with highly rural. Or maybe she just came here because a parent got transferred in their job and this is all new to her. Being the new girl could lead to some shyness as well.

You could easily run with her being shy as well. Overall, you really could keep her personality a lot like it is, the main changes would be the reasoning.

A good starting point would be to consider what sort of person do you want her to be? Do you want her to be close to her canon self, or do you want to deviate highly, but not quite the spoiled rich girl type? It sounds like fleshing out what sort of personality you want her reincarnation to have would be a very good start and then you can make a history that would lead to her being that sort of person.

Got one idea for how you could make it work: he's part of a cult.

A cult? Hmm.

Well, you have to admit that cultists tend to be about as crazy as he is. In some ways he really did seem a lot like a cult leader in how he was trying to convince others to believe all that crazy he believed in.

Hah, there is that. Though he seems to think he's destined to be alone.

I also kind of like the idea of someone starting off shy and reserved, but becoming more grandiose and intense and losing the ability to take things lightly...

Gonna have to cast my vote to Sho here. I loved TWEWY and Sho is my favorite, and I think everyone would get a kick out of his math puns shtick. I think also because the nature of his villainy is never really... defined within canon (I largely got the impression he was "evil" in canon because he was just bored/felt like it) this wouldn't cause an issue with our heavy bias towards antagonists. You can develop him any way you want, of course! I just think the setting would be particularly interesting for him and he'd really take off.

That could be funny as well. And then I started chuckling at another thought of him becoming a soul-bonder or something like that. The really sad thing is that people like Anghel really do exist IRL and normally end up in a mental institution. Of course that's also possible and he escapes somehow.

Poor guy freaks out over choosing a charm and pretty much has to force himself to phrase things so people will understand him. But the reincarnation would have a longer period of lucidity.

...oh, yes, I'm thinking there's some Otherkin stuff going on. That's the cause of the first echo, reading that kind of stuff and it just clicks.

You've read the theory on himnesia, right?

Actually, I hadn't. I've played the game and got through all the paths but never really got into fandom that much.

And definitely, otherkin sounds quite logical for him. Another option is that he could have really gotten into a lot of weird stuff as a teenager. It's not all that uncommon for kids to try out weird stuff while exploring their beliefs. I had quite the obsession with the occult and parapsychology and stuff like that as a kid. Most people who get into that sort of thing eventually grow out of it, but some just never do. Some who never do can at least pass for sane, but others definitely not. I could definitely see him messing around with some friends with a Ouija board and stuff like that.

Fair enough! There's a sequel game which makes it clearer that whatever else Anghel's deal is, it does go beyond delusion, but the old theories still apply.

That's true! And it still goes with the sense of needing to feel special somehow, vital.

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