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Tips on her voice and speech patterns especially, please?

I guess if you have anything at all that would be cool, but that bit especially feels very off.

I WISH I COULD JUST COPYPASTA FROM WHAT I WROTE ON ANONCOMM but alas I cannot.

Mostly what I would suggest is going back and rereading Jade's pesterlogs -- her voice is different enough from the beginning of the comic to the end that canon point will actually matter in this, at least it does to me! Later on, meeting Karkat and becoming less I AM DOING THIS FOR FUNSIES and more I HAVE BUSINESS TO ATTEND TO she is more sarcastic, a little more temperamental. Still extremely silly and loves to have a good time, but there is business! Fun business! She will give you sass if you stand in her way, this is a girl on a mission and sometimes there's just not enough time in the world to stay and be polite to everyone.

Something important is a quote from her log with Tavros and the awks confession "i try to be nice to people when they are nice to me," so by default she will tend towards being polite and friendly when meeting strangers unless proven otherwise! If they are overtly mean to her, then she will be spiky back. But! Friendliness is what she's all about, and she's big on second chances. She even tries to rationalize Jack Noir's bad behavior, though she still doesn't particularly care for him. At least she understands him! Jade is really good at understanding people on a basic, intuitive level -- she sincerely believes that all of her friends can make a difference. This is a girl for whom optimism is a second language.

Another good thing to note is that Jade tends to not use contractions as much as the other kids. If she can get away with it, it's written out in the first part of the sentences and contractions in the last part -- though this ALSO changes a little bit later in the series, but there's enough of it to still take note. When she's on a Mission, this tends to stop a bit, but it's still there. Just write it out a bit until it sounds like too much; Jade's quirk should be really easy to read aloud, and there's such a thing as too many contractions just like there's such a thing as too few. She doesn't need to sound like she's from the 1600s.

Hope that helps!

Edited (I CAN HOMONYMS.) 2012-04-18 06:53 (UTC)

It helps a lot! ♥♥♥ Thank you for all of this, I'll definitely keep it all in mind.

SO I already have an idea of how I play her like this, but I'm always up for different interpretations....

In the game I'm in, it's a complete amnesia game -- and memories are not won back in order. For example, Rose's first memory was [S] Rose: Ride. And her second was the Green Sun mission discussion with Doc Scratch! She doesn't know she's playing a game, or who any of her friends are, or her Mom, or why anyone is important. In addition, she doesn't know her name, or how to write or read...any of the good stuff. Not even horrible wizard fanfic is a skill she kept. It is awaiting its day...

So my question for you is: Rose without her memories, how would you play her? Obviously, she's missing a lot of the influence left by Mom, the secrecy and tendency to passive aggressive maneuvers, psychoanalysis, witty comebacks. So what's left? In addition, how do you think she'd handle all these new revelations about her life when observed almost like an outsider, getting the story piece by piece? Like I said, I have a basic idea, but I'd love to hear someone else's interpretation.

I think that a good (if small) primer of how to play Rose without her memories would be to look at the few clues that we get from the flashback pages to Rose as a young girl - she was bright, happy, inquisitive, and seemed to think the best of everyone including her mother. She liked to play pretend quite often, signifying an active imagination that tended towards the more unusual even in typical child's play - rather than play princess or superheroes, for example, she pretended to be a therapist for her cat.

A lot of the cynicism that Rose displays now seems to have been self-imposed; during the exploration of her house she references actions taken by her mother that 'looking back on it now' seem to be cruelly mocking. This implies that at the time of them occurring she didn't even suspect that they were anything but genuine, suggesting that she was once a much more open and trusting girl. She's also much more comfortable with emoting. When Jaspers died she's quite visibly upset and requested of her mother a funeral for the cat.

Of course there are going to be things integral to her personality that don't change despite having no memory or previous context for them. Things like her extreme loyalty to friends (even if they aren't the same as in the game), intelligence, or tendency to look at things from all angles and maybe make a decision that could be seen as a little darker than morally gray. Without any previous experiences to sour her outlook I don't think that she'd have the same issues with authority or insecurities about being taken seriously that she does in canon.

However, this gets into your second point! I don't think that Rose would appreciate the actions of 'herself' that she sees through snapshot memories at all.

I actually had some fun once in a game where I played Rose very far back on the timeline and she received some shocking information about the future, but without enough context to accept it calmly. She recoiled in horror and became incredibly pissed - at herself for allowing the thing to happen in the first place. Another basic trait of Rose's, I think, is that she internalizes a lot of things that others would acknowledge as being out of their hands. She places a lot of responsibility unfairly onto her own shoulders and blames herself for when things go wrong.

Because your Rose isn't going to be given context for most of the memories she's receiving, it's going to be hard for her to reconcile the actions of the 'real' Rose with what she thinks she is now. If she has friends why does she want to incinerate herself so badly? Why did she let her mother die when she had the power to stop it? It just goes on and on.

I think that this sort of unpleasant memory theater would prompt Rose to decide that she refuses to take the path that's been seemingly set out for her and that she's going to change it to make it better. There's going to be a lot of inward reflection (am I really that mean to people? why can't I just talk about my feelings?) because the amnesiac Rose is going to feel a great deal of disconnect with the 'real' Rose. She's likely going to try and distance herself from the girl that she doesn't really feel is her at all and rationalize the less than savory points she sees.

So. Uh. I hope at least some of that made sense or helped.

Thank you! That was extremely helpful.

No problem. Glad you could make sense of the tl;dr, haha.

I know enough Daves where it's like, shit, might as well troll them in memes. But I'd rather not add another shitty Dirk to the pile, so how do I not screw this up?

Gonna c&p what I said to an anon before. Just some really basic tips for Dirk.

- Try not to make him speak like the auto-responder (and with the recent update, his 13-year-old self). Dirk uses big words but he doesn't abuse the Thesaurus constantly, which I think the AR does because it's a pretentious 13-year-old jackass (not to say Dirk doesn't come off as a bit pretentious, but he's also growing up). I've seen people make him extremely technical, and I don't think that's how he's been coming off so far in recent logs. His style is kind of loose, if that makes sense. He slips the larger words in fluidly and with discretion, kind of like certain trolls' puns. He also doesn't seem to use as many metaphors as the AR, even going so far as to stop himself from making one when he's talking to Jane. He seems to get sort of annoyed when the AR does it, too - "Ok, got it. You and the handle are tight. We don't need a whole thing about this." It might be a habit he's trying to force himself out of but either way, use sparingly. On the flipside, I've seen him written as sort of indistinguishable from anyone else. Dirk is fairly straightforward with his speech but he's got a particular rhythm. He comes off as pretty serious, but there's little bits of sarcasm and wordplay and general fucking-around that makes it more fun. I would suggest just going over his pesterlogs, maybe saving them all in a document for quick reference.

- Dirk is extremely confident and cool. The "cool" isn't really "wow what a cool guy" but more the way he carries himself. He clearly doesn't care if people judge him for his weird interests and displays them without much irony, unlike Dave, who's much more insecure about himself. He doesn't try to explain those interests away, they're just there.

- Remember that he's shown basically no emotion so far, nor inclinations toward almost anything related to how he feels. We've mostly just seen him vaguely annoyed and reactive to others, as he's preoccupied in the dream world or otherwise. I think he's definitely a Strider in that sense and it's important not to let him show any strong emotions. However, he's human, so of course he's going to feel them - just not ever make them obvious. He'd rather talk about other peoples' feelings than his own, and has made a couple of notes on those already. I think he truly cares about all of his friends, though, and he just has bizarre ways of showing it (sending them robots and/or edited books about horses, trying to make them "stronger", feeling like he knows what's best for them without consulting them or giving them much heads-up first.) The fact that he keeps a pretty diligent watch over Roxy is really telling.

- In that vein, he hasn't appeared surprised or frightened by anything yet. When he's talking about something dire he presents it really factually. It's all been dealt with very calmly, though this may change when we see what happens with him and the approaching drones. Whatever the case, he seems like a guy who would be hard to scare. It's interesting to note that even though his planet seems like it'd be a terrifying shithole, Jake and Jane still have no idea about it (or so we thought, but this recent update shows Jake only knows because Dirk very specifically told him) . We didn't even know about it because it never came up with anybody, even Roxy. Dirk just doesn't seem like a guy who reveals these sorts of things, which makes it even easier to play him since he's not gonna go around telling people he came from some totalitarian planet ruled by invading aliens.

- Dirk comes off as a stick in the mud when he's focused on something he considers serious. He wants nothing to do with Roxy's flippant behavior regarding the game, and he doesn't like uU's cagey way of telling him info. At the same time he seems to think he's the guy who can figure everything out and will get shit done even if none of his teammates care "as much" (quotes because that's his perception, I think, and definitely not the truth).

- His sexuality. This is a pretty big point in fandom and I really, really disagree that Dirk would ever define himself as one thing. I've been playing him as inclined toward dudes, but I feel like he's open to basically anything. The thing that makes this easy is Dirk has already said he thinks the term "gay" is outdated and stupid as fuck and he wants nothing to do with it. I can't see Dirk's response as being anything other than "who cares" if it came up in a game. I'm not sure if he's the kind of guy who still wants a relationship, though, so I think we'll have to see on that front. Whatever he confesses to Jake is definitely going to be a huge indication of his character. Just remember to not make that a big deal, and try to avoid even giving a straight answer if you can.

These are the big things I've noticed so far. There's much, much more to his character but I think it's less concrete and more interpretation, so I tried to stick to the obvious stuff. Hope it helps.

Edited 2012-04-22 23:56 (UTC)

It does, bro, it really does. Thanks! I tried him early on, got deterred, but it's been something I've been wanting to do for a while.

Not sure where else to put this. Might be considering picking him up but I kind of want to doublecheck with other people about how they think AR differs from Dirk.

Any tips on keeping with her speech patterns, personality, motivations, etc?

If you don't ponder/play her, could you tell me what you expect from a good Jane? What are the signs of a bad one?

I love her to bits but don't quite have much confidence with her yet so any advice would help!

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post o1.

KIDS

JADE HARLEY

Re: JADE HARLEY

Re: JADE HARLEY

ROSE LALONDE

Re: ROSE LALONDE

Re: ROSE LALONDE

no subject

DIRK STRIDER

Re: DIRK STRIDER

Re: DIRK STRIDER

AUTO-RESPONDER

JANE!