Subject: Characters
Author:
Posted on: 2014-07-28 02:15:00 UTC
Well, you're not really gonna make a good character if you write a few up and then throw them away, can you?
Put a personality into the character, make it unique, make it stand out. If someone asks "what makes it stand out" and you can honestly say nothing, you have a problem.
I'm toying with the notion of having both Samantha and Larry have "intern" style training with agents in different departments, but there aren't any free-to-use available outside of bad slash.
I'm just intending to use these following concepts once or twice, then throwing them into the free-to-use. (Then again, that's what I said about Kim and Hue. I'm still thinking Hue can go to free-to-use, but not Kim.)
You've been throwing out a lot of character concepts, especially for someone who hasn't gotten permission yet (I think? I might have missed that. If you have, I apologize profusely). A lot of them also seem to be meant for free-to-use. While there's nothing wrong with that, the PPC does not need characters for the sake of just having characters.
My recommendation to you is to slow down and focus on one agent pairing. Just to start off with. Once you've found your groove, then you can move on to making more agents.
As for the characters you've presented themselves, there isn't really a lot to go on in terms of an actual judgement. Both Nathan and Dwight seem to be aggressively middle-of-the-road (Nathan doesn't show "high passion," Dwight isn't "obsessive" about his exercise). It makes them seem rather bland. Shangmu has even less personality beyond her culture, her being a vegetarian, and her not liking to hurt people.
I'm feeling hindered by who my agents can interact with. There's people on the postal staff and Alice, (so happy to discover those,) some other support staff, a great number of Medical and FicPsych personel, (also useful,) and a few DBS Agents. (Hello Luxury, the training mission is going to be interesting.)
I'm working without permission. It's just that everything I have been working on is a mess that can mostly be fixed by letting it ferment. (And some other things I'm waiting on.) Need to cycle to the new stuff and have it buried in compost when the old stuff is ready to be pulled out.
For Nathan and Dwight, I kinda wanted them to be severely normal. (Okay, having two men fit any of the stereotypes is either hilarious or the opposite. Having them hit none of them is either uncomfortable or funny.) I think it would be a weird clash with what they do since most agents seem to be insane or into that scary beyond-damage stage.
Shangmu is rough, but knowledge about the show fills her out a bit. Basically her core is the same as Aang's when he's arguing with his past lives about morality. There's also a spiritual side much like Zahn from Farscape. I said vegetarian and not liking to hurt people because there is a vague difference between that and total pacifist. I don't have my monks straight, but she's more based off the "self-defense" kind than the "warn the bugs you're coming" kind.
Just because most agents aren't free-to-use it doesn't mean that they're under permanent lock-down. If you ask if you can borrow anyone's agents for a random encounter or amusing interlude, there are always people willing to lend out theirs.
And, once you have a few missions under your belt and people have a feeling for your style, it should be possible for you to find partners for team-up missions. (Maybe you can even find people who would want to do co-writes for your intern idea.)
Collaborations help make the PPC feel like an actual organization and not just a collection of isolated RCs, so it's always better to try to get someone to work with you rather than invent new characters if you need a larger cast. (And I'm saying this as much to myself as to you. My agents don't get out a lot either.)
Once I get permissions, perhaps your characters could work with my characters in a mission?
Maybe, I could lend you mine as well if needed. I feel like I'm not going to get permission because my main team aren't really permission material and they rejected my using my secondary team for permission even though they are more the role.
Well, you're not really gonna make a good character if you write a few up and then throw them away, can you?
Put a personality into the character, make it unique, make it stand out. If someone asks "what makes it stand out" and you can honestly say nothing, you have a problem.
I've got enough that I like... Larry comes in with nothing except exuberance, which make him almost equal to the normals that I created. Everyone else has blast, and some of the missions that I read were chores.
Basically my disposable characters have more use than what I give them. Stones have flaws that chip, but many diamonds are valued for what lesser materials they can polish.
Just because I let other people have them after I'm done with them doesn't mean that they have less value. Rather they have more because they get to be used if another of my type comes along.
The only metaphor I can come up with is waffle irons, and they aren't lovingly handmade. Heck, I was probably the last sucker to buy one used.
But that's not the problem.
It's fine that you're letting others use your characters afterwards... well it would be if others would want to use them. With as much detail as you're giving they're basically fancy bit characters. Stop making more characters and instead work on a few. Quality over quantity is the key here.
1) PC is right, you should really settle down.
2) For the interactions part, if you feel the characters you write aren't enough, you can do co-writes with people, and/or have your agents cameo in others' missions or vice-versa.
Shangmu is a blip-fic character from a Last Airbender fic and was born before "Boy in the Iceberg." The backstory about her village is that some of the Air Nomads were away from the temples when the Fire Nation attacked. The remaining nomads were able to instill their culture on a hidden village, but no more benders were born.
Shangmu's sensibilities reflect the culture, and she is trained in a mundane fighting style based on Airbending. (Look up Ba Gua Zhang for move references.) Basically she's vegetarian and isn't fond of actually hurting people.
I was going to pair her up with Zigsa, but they're culturally similar and I want an opposite. Zigsa was created by a young author who watched Pom Poko and thought anime cat girls had the same powers as the tanuki. She's irritated by this.
Perhaps someone into Sci-fi. Maybe a cat-person from Doctor Who?
This would be a Department of Implausible Crossovers team.
Nathan could blend in as an office drone or customer service rep. He's charismatic in an unobtrusive way and slightly intellectual. He keeps himself groomed, but not obsessively. He appreciates sports and literary classics, but doesn't show high passions for most things. Character references: Clark Kent, and Steven Jinks from Warehouse 13.
Dwight is a bit more down-to-earth and likes working with his hands. Before the PPC, it's equally believable for him to have been a furnace technician or a chef in a restaurant. He likes to keep fit, but not obsessively so, and likes to jog or shoot hoops when he gets a chance.
Nathan and Dwight are in a same-sex marriage. Nathan doesn't seem gay to the casual observer. Dwight is bisexual, but he has a complicated opinion about women.
They want to adopt, and both would happily walk the line between maternalistic and paternalistic roles.
They work in Department of Improbable AU's and tend to work Supernatural, Sherlock, and other continuities that tend to have slash, but they handle the non-consumating romance fics.