Character Meme Thing

Your character that represents you!

Marcus di Isera, the court archivist of Avalar in 's Dragons Unite series! He evolved out of another character called "Amperon", who I'd designed as a contemporary of Malefor's...the idea was that he'd have run the Warfang Archives; a sort of museum/library combo, which would have been full of prophetic texts and artefacts and whatnot, and so he'd have taught Malefor for a bit in an attempt to push him towards what he saw as his destiny...only for Malefor to return as an adult, kill him, and destroy the Archives after claiming the artefacts he needed to wake the Destroyer. 

Anyway, when I started helping with Dragons Unite, I decided I wanted to create a character who I could use as an avatar of sorts, and so I took the idea of an archive master (at the time I was doing a lot of nerdy work to help flesh out the world), but came up with a new backstory; he was a middle-ranking member of the archives who was promoted after his superiors died in the Battle for Warfang! He was originally just meant as a minor character, but...well, he certainly grew in prominence!

You protect yourself through them, vent through them etc, they keep you strong. You probably have a deep emotional connection with this character.

That'll have to be the Alectoral Council! Heh, nobody's going to have a clue who I'm talking about with these guys...remember that deviation I uploaded a while back showing a fantasy planet but with Europa Universalis style divisions on it? These characters are from that world...and it's come a long way! It's perhaps the oldest concept I've had that I'm still going with after all these years; starting out as an idea for a powerful company of some sort (I was perhaps eight and I'd played a game with a cool control tower design in it), which then merged with another idea of a fantasy planet that was a sort of hub world for characters from films, books and games, and finally (after a number of attempts to ground it a bit more in reality) became a multinational research organisation called the Grand Alectoral Union, which valued knowledge above all other things, and which had facilities all over a fictional universe and lots of technology...ludicrously overpowered, yes, but think of this more as the setting and the supporting cast rather than as main characters; the facilities and technologies meant things could go wrong and create crisis after crisis, or a civil war could break out with people fighting using hastily converted devices from research sites! Or...agh, I'm not describing this well, but I'd need to go on for hours to really do this one justice...

Anyway, the Alectoral Council were the leaders of the twelve "Alectorates" that made up the Alectoral Union itself, and originally, they were all based off me, as this part of the idea grew out of a concept for...well, basically Inside Out before that movie existed; little people inside a person's head who all control a specific emotion or something. They evolved a bit more from there and gained proper personalities, and every now and then I had fun imagining scenes where these twelve people would bitch at each other as they reviewed new material for the Alectoral Union to peruse...oh, and that reminds me; remember how in Reflections there's a mention of Alexandria pushing past a man wearing purple robes? That was meant to be one of these characters...an intentional cameo that I knew nobody else would get...

3. Your Sunshine!

or maybe they are very cute. A character who's your own personal sun.

Alexandria di Avalaria! Well, technically she's 's character, but I helped design her, and also wrote the story Reflections that pretty much shaped her completely, so I feel a bit of a connection with her! Originally, she was just "Alexander Jr"; a name on a family tree...at this point in time, Ddraig had only recently been turned female, and after a fair bit of debate on the matter, the idea of her and Alexander having a son named Elwynn had been sorted out, and after a few extra discussions on the topic, we later decided to give Ddraig two more children later on; a son called Alexander Jr, and a daughter called Selena. started writing a vague concept involving the two characters as adults, with Selena living on a moon colony and messaging her twin back home, but he stalled on the idea and noted that he wasn't entirely satisfied with Alexander Jr's character. Now, a few months earlier, I'd sent him a concept for something set in the above Alectoral Union world involving a transsexual dragon (long story; it was meant to explore a number of ideas at once and also help set up things that existed in the modern day), and wondered whether Alexander Jr was the same. 

A few brainstorming sessions later, I started writing "Reflections"; telling the story of Alexander Jr falling in love with Prince Long'Liang as a hatchling, steadily realising she's a female trapped in a male's body as she grows, and finally transitioning to female as an adult and asking Liang out. I'm very proud with how the story turned out - the only thing I was scared of at the time was people reading it and thinking I was using Alexandria as a surrogate for myself...which I wasn't; I'm a boring old straight cis male! - and Alexandria went on to become the "Queen of Fluff", since literally every picture we get done of her (often with Liang) is just adorable... 

The odd ball character you're not sure why you have, but you treasure them deeply. Perhaps because they're just so weird?

Hehe, that'd have to be Marcus' eldest child; Electra di Isera! She's not actually really had many scenes written about her yet, but there's plenty planned for her! Both of Marcus' children are technological nuts who love tinkering with machinery and designing things, and so while her brother Andreas went into the space program with Selena and now works to keep that running smoothly, Electra spends her time at home as a Mad Scientist of sorts; constantly designing strange devices "FOR SCIENCE!" or to try and fix small problems, with her parents serving as her test subjects...but no matter what goes wrong, they've never been hurt badly - although Marcus has tripped over some cables running through the house a few more times than he'd have liked. She might sound like a lunatic, but she's not; she's very VERY clever, just...devoted to her work.

Okay, now who has the most sentimental value? Maybe a character you received from a friend, or who you have fond memories of. Perhaps they're very old?

Hmm, for this one I'll pick a character I designed for a role-playing session with my friends in Petone; Ranger Parks! We often meet up once a week to play a tabletop game of some sorts - usually "Monster of the Week", or something similar - and although my first character designed was a human version of Marcus (the second was Wolfgang Amalric Linde; an Alector visiting another reality to do a task for his Alectorate), Ranger Parks is the first one I designed for a Fallout-themed game we were trialling at the time. He's...well, I guess you'd say he's a Lawful Good NCR Ranger; he's quite diplomatic and tries to solve things peacefully, but he's also good with ranged weapons, and can use those if things go pear-shaped. He's been through a lot...he's negotiated treaties with groups, been horribly injured and reported dead by a team-member for no real reason (the character was Chaotic Evil and died shortly afterwards after foolishly pulling a gun on an NCR General and his armoured guards in the middle of a military camp with no backup...well, he assumed we'd come, but against those odds? Forget it!), been forced to go against his own faction...

Fun fact; when I first designed him, I intended for Ranger Parks to be a fake...he'd have just scavenged the equipment off a dead ranger and invented the persona of Ranger Parks to take advantage of the NCR's reputation! But after a while I decided to make him a legitimate Ranger...

Hmm...tough one. I suppose I could mention the "9" character I designed who had skin made up of various fabrics...but since I never used them for anything, I'll go with Marcus' mate, the beautiful Sonja Alturi! She's an archivist from another country - and with an injury of her own - and she and Marcus became close friends once they started working together, and this grew into love. Sonja's character is still being developed, as, like Electra and Andreas, she hasn't appeared in too much yet, but so far we know that she's got a love for strange foods, and as a result of her viking heritage, she can drink all her friends (Ddraig, Cystal and 's Nicola; the four of them are set to have some adventures soon!) under the table!

'The rarity' How about a character you're so surprised you actually managed to get. You probably won't be letting go of them anytime soon!

Hee hee, Rictar the Deathclaw! This is another character from the Fallout RP we did...I'd been doing a fair bit of research into the Fallout world at the time, and I had learned about Goris from Fallout 2; a member of a family of sentient Deathclaws! I figured it would be fun to play as such a character, so I designed Rictar as Goris' son; keen to mingle with society and be accepted by humankind, and also seeking a mate to ensure his species would survive! Like Goris, he wears a giant robe to hide his form, and often pretends to be a Super Mutant (in RL I can mimic their voices well ) when people ask about that...hilariously, in one instance, our characters were set to be "executed" at a military camp (it was the same one that Chaotic Evil character had died at, and the newly made commander was doing this to allow us to escape while he could save face), and since we all needed to be tied to posts, one of our team needed to be the one to do it rather than the guards, so they wouldn't realise that I was a Deathclaw (and carrying everybody's loot)...so me and Ciaran promptly improvised this over the top dramatic scene where we pretty much acted like the protagonists from Of Mice And Men! Another funny time, we had to go through a decontamination chamber of some sort in order to enter a Vault, and the group all had to don a special suit to get in...naturally, as a Deathclaw, I wouldn't fit in the suits. So, after some debating as to what to do, I said "Fuck it!" and announced that Rictar would just enter the room with no suit at all. I rolled dice to see how well that would go...and got a twelve. So, the keeper described how my character went through an absolute hell...but stoically took it and came out unharmed, but smoking, while we all laughed. Ah, good old Rictar...I actually stopped using him after a while because his melee attacks meant that he often ended up being targeted first and taking the most damage...so at the moment he's now helping at Radio Snu-Snu (run by a Super Mutant).

8. Weird Attachment
...huh, shouldn't there be a description here? Ah well.

Jarl Eric Liefsson of Sudreyar...at least, I think that's his name! This was a one-off character I made for a game down at the local depot, and boy, did things get crazy here! My character was a viking ghost who'd died on a failed attempt to find Hy-Brasil, and who was still looking for it in the present day. The rest of the team included a werewolf hunter who was looking for the one that had killed his wife (Nick), a mage (Tim), and a conspiracy theorist (Josh). The mission was to investigate a mall where a number of strange occurrences were going on. Nick and I promptly strode into the mall, while Josh for some reason went to the security guards to alert them to the fact that we had weapons. Since Josh had weapons as well, the guards attacked him when he refused to hand them over, and he and Tim ended up battling a huge force of cops out the front. What did me and Nick do? Ignored the fighting, and I taught him how to play the viking game "Tafl"...eventually we intervened, mind.

Anyway, things went bad from there as we investigated the mall, and we eventually learned that the monster was a demon who grew stronger every time someone died at the mall...and since Josh and Tim had killed so many guards, he was stupidly overpowered and now impossible for us to beat. Tim, having recently killed a child for being creepy, decided to join him, and Josh and Nick did the same, while I refused, and promptly killed Tim by leaping through the floor (ghost, remember) and stabbing him in the crotch. Josh then attacked the demon; using a sneak attack which meant that he did extra damage, but me and Nick decided to leg it; realising only afterwards that if we'd kept fighting, Josh's move would have let us defeat the demon. Ah well. My headcanon is that our characters took a plane away from that area and joined up with the rest of the RP characters...and eventually my character will retire on the beaches of Brazil.

Welp, I've already listed several, so time to go back a loooong time and look at two of the first OCs I designed...ladies and gentlemen, I give you Sparky B. Barkin (All Dogs Go To Heaven) and Hooter the Parasaurolophus (The Land Before Time). Sparky holds pride of place as the first OC I can remember creating; I'd recently rediscovered the old Don Bluth movie and joined a message board called Killer's Korner which was full of RPs and discussions about the film series...or at least, it had been once; by the time I joined, most of the big names had vanished (on this site, there were a few people who had the names of movie characters as their user name, and they acted exclusively as those characters) which was kind of sad. Anyway, I decided I wanted to try and get in on the action, and so I tried to design a character who could fit in the mythos, and a story to go with it! 

I didn't really get too far with this - I think I've got three awfully written bits of paper somewhere with the first few chapters on it; I never uploaded anything - but I remember the vague concept; basically, Sparky (the name came from a discussion with the family about the worst nicknames imaginable) was a distant relative of the original film's protagonist; something like a great-great-great nephew, and was a technical whiz who'd gained the nickname Sparky after electrocuting himself by mistake as a pup. Anyway, he worked for the bad guys, but gained a conscience in a really badly written scene, and so ended up getting killed off after confronting the boss. After that...well, the vague idea was to have a plot structure similar to the events of the second film, but also involving another user's OC who I hadn't actually asked permission to use ...oy, it's a good thing that didn't go anywhere. Although I actually came up with a wholly new concept and story involving a retooled version of this character several years later after having a strange dream...basically, the character still works for the bad guys, and is shifting stuff in a warehouse, while quietly embezzling things for himself. One of the boss' lackeys confronts him over this, and he threatens them with some incriminating evidence he has...and then later that night there's an accident and a crane drops a crate on him, killing him. His ghost then has to figure out just who was responsible out of the four people who were there that night...

Now, as for the other character, Hooter! Ugh, in retrospect, that wasn't the best choice of name for the character...but I'll explain how he came to be! Basically, a few years later, after growing up and becoming a bit more savvy about how to write a character, I was on a Land Before Time message board, and I came up with the idea of a character who had died before the events of the series began...an important figure who'd only be seen in flashbacks. An odd concept, but I liked the idea of...well, someone whose fate is spoiled from the start. Plus it was also a sort of...anti-status quo? I don't really know how to describe it...but anyway, it evolved into a story about the life of a Parasaurolophus named "Parry" who'd gained a knock to the head and lost his memory while fleeing from a Sharptooth atack, and so had adopted the name Hooter (based on a hatchling calling him that after the sounds he made), and been raised by an elderly Styracosaurus named Mr. Spikehead. By the time of the main series, Mr. Spikehead was long dead, and Hooter was an adult, but he made sure his mentor wasn't forgotten by the denizens of the Valley...and later on from there he reunited with his family, but returned to the Valley afterwards. This story...well, I wrote some scenes, and uploaded them to DA, but the bulk of it went unfinished. A shame, because I was very proud of the beginning and ending; it starts with a family of Saurolophus hatchlings and a lone Stegosaurus hatchling sitting to hear a story told by an old dinosaur, making it look like Ducky and Spike and family listening...and then at the end of the story it turns out it's Spike who's telling the story, and he's actually babysitting Ducky's kids!

Okay who just joined your family of characters? Let's see them!

Okay, to be honest I also designed another character for a one-off game recently (Illyricum, an androgynous angel thing), but I'm going to go with "Hyperion" instead, because his story is funnier! He's another product of a game at the depot; this time, using a completely different game system called "Fate"! The Keeper for this game spent some time explaining the rules and said there weren't many limits as to what our characters could be, so I decided to be a robotic dragon-digger-car combo, loosely inspired by the strutters in the second Dinotopia book (which, in an awesome twist, the Keeper recognised immediately, and so he gave me a thumbs up for this character)! Anyway, after a while we had a team including a mad scientist, a radio superstar, and some creepy figure who had a crush on her, and we were tasked by the mafia to track down some fugitive (I might be remembering some of this wrong)...of course, that was the task, but instead we ended up going off course in the most random and hilarious way I've ever seen a game end (and I've played a game where the monster - a giant moth - was infected with reverse lycanthropy and a full moon simulated so that they could somehow be turned into a human because another character fell in love with them). So, to get information, we went to find "Mr Big", a brothel owner who knew where the fugitive was. Another character spent forever negotiating a deal with him and ended up joining his brothel, and in the aftermath of this (and a short battle with some mooks who showed up to stop us), an off-hand joke was made about this story being so strange and full of rude jokes that it might as well end with all of us in a cinema watching this as a porno. At that point we suddenly realised that another character had the ability to manipulate reality (we'd used it earlier to give Mr. Big a really high pitched squeaky voice), and so we teamed up in order to turn the world into a porno movie. We did with a few successful rolls, and the keeper announced that the game was over; we hadn't completed our goal or even come close to tracking down the fugitive, but turning ALL OF REALITY into a porno was such an insane achievement that we won by default.

Ah, RP games...how delightfully stupid you can get!

Tags:

Hmm, Ddraig's already been tagged...so in that case, you, !
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