A nerd like any other...

I am hating not having LJ Login. Sorry, everyone in my RP life who isn't interacting with Enoch. It's my fault for being lazy, really. I'll tag everyone who's missing a tag once LJ Login is fixed.

Speaking of Enoch, thanks to whoever sent that spider. You made my morning! XD

You know what that means?

PROMPTS POST!

Give me a character or two (optional), a canon or RP I know, and a prompt. I will write whatever comes to mind, be it a fic, a drabble, a poem, whatever. Please note that I may ask you to change one of these if I'm not familiar enough with the variable in question.

Title: Introspect
Source: SJ, SMT DR
Rating: G
Pairings: Mastema/Zelenin (adarkerangel/secular_saint)
Warnings: Uh.  A bit angsty?  Otherwise none.
Summary: The heightened tension after the Mall's Conception brings Mastema face to face with renewed guilt and some of his difficulties with communication.
Notes: So this was originally gonna be a summary of SJ from Mastema's perspective (as relating to Zelenin).  But the muse realized how pathetic he was being.  So...yay?

( Under the cut )

 

The fourth wall has become transparent, revealing a long table at which several muses sit, watching the world on the other side of thousands of computer monitors with a nervous expectancy in their eyes.

They have gathered here, waiting for questions to come their way.

The people on the other side will supply them. The questions may concern anything at all, in-character, backstory, meta, whatever can come to their minds. They only need ask in a reply to this post, and the interview will commence. They will be compelled to answer every question, regardless of how uncomfortable it may be.

So, if there are any old clan members from Kikkyou still watching or clanless/other clan DR members reading this but not watching the DR's OOC comm, then I figured I'd let you know I created a clan for the DR. If you want to join it or migrate from other clans or whatever (DR players/former players/prospective players/lurkers are welcome!) then just go ahead and let me know. ^^

So I had a bizarre dream. I say "I" had it but that's only because it came from my brain in the big picture.

But it didn't feel like mine.

( cut for length and being bizarre. )

So, I read through the RP Anon Comm post and noticed someone was a little...concerned about what we mean when we say things like "Character X is quiet".

It kind of makes me sad that this person, presumably a fellow RPer, has never internalized a voice before.

I'm gonna use a bad example but bear with me.

When Stephenie Meyer said her cast was like people living in her head, she was most certainly not telling the truth, but it was something a "good" writer should say. I'm certain she heard it somewhere and felt it could help her image. (Incidentally, I do believe her when she said Jacob was her first character that "came to life" for her. He felt real and believable in those segments, but more on that later, maybe.)

See, when we write for a character, we're basically predicting what they do in certain situations. If you do this enough with a single character, it becomes effortless ("enough" varies among characters and writers. Some come to life in a single day, others take years. Some never do.). We don't have to think about it consciously. So it feels like they're a separate entity, which is why we call this "coming to life".

At this point, it is still possible to be OOC. After all, you're still the one writing, and it's entirely possible to misunderstand the muse (or in more mundane terms, your intuition regarding the character), inadvertently "filter" what's happening, or, if the writer is particularly immature, plain not like where they're headed and deliberately derail them, even if this is just as unconscious as writing for the character has become. (As Meyer did with Jacob. He was becoming entirely too likable, and had too real a chemistry with Bella, and she didn't want anything in the way of her precious OTP.)

I understand that on the internet, a distinction must be made because there are crazies out there who actually think they're bonded to or are the "real" character on the astral plane or something (I wonder how they handle someone else playing the same character!), but nitpicking over our phrasing is not the way to make that distinction. I'm sure a person can tell for themselves if someone is crazy or not.

When we say a muse is quiet, it means that we are not inspired for them or that our subconscious hold on their voice is slipping and we're not putting forth the effort (not that making an extra effort usually helps in these situations because it's usually due to a lack of inspiration and "forcing" a voice can all too often end in suck).

When I say a muse "pings"...well. I don't know about the rest of you. But what I do when I RP - when I predict what they'll do - I do in real life. Constantly. I always have a muse or two "watching" me so I keep a feel for their voice fresh in my mind. So since I have muses constantly watching what I'm doing in meta, basically, they indicate that something will happen or that they are interested. Or, in practical terms, I predict that they predict they will be affected or interested. Confused yet? It's a bit confusing to relate.

In short, we writers may say they're like people living in our heads, but the operative word there is like. We may or may not omit that word, but it is always implied. We realize they're fictional, and treat them as such. All we mean by that is that we have gained an understanding of them to the point that we no longer have to consciously think about what they would want or do, so they seem autonomous.

Stolen from atrypical

Pick a character I write, and I will give you the top few/several ideas/concepts/other I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to depicting them accurately. Includes both fandom and original characters.

And watch me fail. XD

The How's My Driving? Meme

I don't know why I want input on Mastema so badly. I mean. Even if everyone agreed he was terribly OOC, I've done so much I couldn't bear to reset him and there's really no way to correct such a drift.

Bah.