FEBRUARY PLOTTING MEME

[returnjourney]

FEBRUARY PLOTTING MEME

Welcome to the Return Journey's first plotting meme!

In plotting memes, we share what we're doing next, our dream storylines, and any gentle workshopping on tricky subjects or character choices — essentially a CR Meme with an optional smidge of How's My Driving.

These memes are not mandatory, but they are highly encouraged because it's a place to plan CR and communicate your character arc in a way that can get others involved with yours. They're meant to be low pressure and high yield. When in doubt, ask questions!

Every month, we offer a few different prompts or character-building questions. These are entirely optional; you can absolutely just fill in the base form if you want.

<b>Player:</b> <b>Contact:</b> <b>Notes:</b> Time zone, speed, and/or any other habits you want people to know. What do you like or frequently talk about? <b>Character:</b> <b>Canon:</b> <b>Status:</b> Warden or Inmate <b>Info:</b> Give us a brief rundown on your character! What kind of CR do they offer? <b>Plotting:</b> What have they been up to? Any plans? Recent open posts or threads? <b>Goals:</b> Do you have any goals in game? Topics you want to explore? Desired CR? <b>Etc:</b> Anything else!

Monthly Prompts

This month we're asking questions themed around consequences.

Think about the thing that your character desires most — if they failed to fulfill that desire, what would the consequence be? Does it change how they pursue their desire? Is it entirely personal, or beyond them, impacting others?

What consequences does your character need to grow? Consequences are crucial to telling a character arc for both inmates and wardens. Without them, there can't be stakes or tension, and without stakes or tension, there's no impetus to grow. What's a kick in the teeth your character needs? What are they robbing themselves of when they try to avoid these consequences?

How do consequences affect your character externally and internally? How do they react? What kinds of consequences are intolerable or tolerable, necessary or unnecessary?

Comments

k2

[barometz]

Player: k2 / kate
Contact: plurk or discord (shambolism#8807)
General HMD: heya
Notes:

PST, around in the evenings.

Slower tagger, will sometimes boomerang

I like writing about jerks, complicated CR, and taking the cheap joke.

silco

[kaijuice]

Character: Silco
Canon: Arcane
Status: Inmate
Info:

Silco is observant, often prickly, and focused on the long-term. He's currently disinterested in redemption, and unimpressed by people who want to do better. He's certain that he's done his best.

At home, Silco is a gangster with revolutionary ambitions, and 1.5 that people he cares about to an excessive degree. Everyone else? Expendable. He's here to work on trust, empathy, and whatever a "healthy boundary" is.

He can offer -

Manipulation (successful or not)

Info-digging, tell him about your life :))

Pulling the dick move in a plot

Parental introspection

Someone to lose a physical fight

Plotting:

I've been running behind this month, and I'm mostly focused on catching up on that. Please let me know if you'd like a starter, and always feel free to swing into my inbox for a thread / scene. I'll hit yours too!!

He does have a few small balls in the air -

William and Viktor are aware he's been busting all the robots. Silco only knows that Viktor does, though.

Paired with Grace for the month, and has made his goal getting her to commit out loud to what she will or won't do ethically.

Trying to work out how exactly a gun is "unique" to a Warden, and how one might get around that.

Goals:

I'd like to (read - need to actually plan / thread) have him work on establishing himself as a source for materials or information in game, whether or not he actually succeeds at that. Buddy should be trying to make himself useful to others and I've been slacking.

I've been focusing on deepening CR before he makes an escape attempt, but that's likely in the next few months as well, if that's something you'd like to get in on.

HE IS HERE to better himself though, and I'd like that to happen incidentally along the way!

To start that -

His daughter killed him, and he's been carrying on like none of that happened / has not confronted dying since the first week here.

He's touched :,) by loyalty :,,)) particularly under circumstances like these where no one owes him anything. Even small gestures towards that are a good in to deeper CR.

BOY HE REALLY HATES COPS, and has yet to blow up about it here. Would love to change that.

There's another guy here from his hometown, who didn't adapt by murdering children, so "did you actually have to do that" conversations seem inevitable, even if the reaction rn will be "uh yeah" and unfurling a scroll of Reasons.

Etc:

He's a jerk, I don't take him at all seriously OOC & neither should you. Please feel free to reach out if there's ever an issue, I'm always happy to edit a tag or chat something out.

prompts

[kaijuice]

that i definitely missed were in here WHOOPS

Desires -

Silco most desires independence for his country, and the continued safety of his daughter. These things are, at the moment, intrinsically at odds - but they both stem from a need for control and belonging.

Giving up on one meant that he ended up failing at both, and also there's a war now. Oops. He's still reckoning with this. At the moment, by ignoring that it happened.


Consequences -

Silco thinks he's a hard-case (lol), and is likely to respond to material consequence as a challenge to be overcome. But methods like that are ultimately self-isolating, both for personal development, and in limiting his ability to get anything done. Funny how people don't want to ally themselves with treacherous assholes.

He's more alone here than he's ever been, and the inability to just fill that with another struggle will be likely helpful in turning that struggle inward. Workaholics gotta occasionally reflect on why they're soul-crushingly lonely and have lost everything they value.

At some point he's going to end up in solitary, expect to handle it like a champ, and have some real issues.

[aposeme]

i absolutely want the screw that silco slipped volk to come to something, planting it on him was super clever

[kaijuice]

how about

that's the vent where silco is, as of now, stashing his non-screwdriver contraband (:

if volk annoys him again — UNLIKELY, I KNOW!! — or he has another good reason, maybe he'll then put something up there that rots. to draw attention.

EDITS LATE BECAUSE I THOUGHT OF SOMETHING BETTER -

as of now he's going to casually add to that vent every so often so it looks like a stockpile. as ya might collect before another escape attempt. one of the blankets he stole off an unoccupied bunk and was previously using, some food that won't rot, a knife, etc.

if / when he has a reason to pull the trigger, rotten food goes up there along with [[i will brainstorm something else to implicate volk]]

[aposeme]

heoheoehehhoheh yes good

[expectaspectre]

our thread is going so well :)

[kaijuice]

i'm thrilled, can't wait 2 talk about how near death experiences make you BETTER and render CLARITY OF PURPOSE

[expectaspectre]

what do you mean NEAR death, some of us didn't wimp out on it, Silco

[kaijuice]

he got it right the second time ok!!

Re: silco

[lessandmorethanhuman]

Oooo working on trust issues would be INTERESTING with our two. Alex is also really fucking loyal once you earn his trust/friendship--it's just very hard to do. Mind, that Loyalty is also the kind of "If I see you going down a self-destructive path, I will try to stop you" type of loyalty.

I would also love for discussions of "did it have to be this way?" regarding their situations. Alex is not at all sure how ELSE everything he's done COULD have gone, even with him making mistakes and making it worse. So while he's remorseful, he's not entirely sure he wouldn't do it again if needed.

^^

alice

[helenite]

Character: Alice Quinn
Canon: The Magicians (Book version)
Status: Warden
Info:

Alice is a huge nerd who's prone to nerves, likes hands-on work, and cares about her friends just a bit too much. She's very committed to her windfall, but not at all sure about the Admiralty's methods.

At home, she's a professional wizard and aimless twenty-something, who pulled the spell equivalent of a grenade on herself to save her friends. She's here to make sure that it actually worked - and to practice using her convictions, instead of just excusing them.

She can offer -

Baseline friendly CR

A nihilist worldview

Ill-advised experiments

Very ill-advised coverups

Someone to win a physical fight

Plotting:

I've been running behind this month, and I'm mostly focused on catching up on that. Please let me know if you'd like a starter, and always feel free to swing into my inbox for a thread / scene. I'll hit yours too!!

She does have a few small balls in the air -

Unpaired for the month, and staying the dorms with William to keep an eye on things.

Volunteering for absolutely everything.

Also, she blew up the Destroy-It when I get around to TAGGING THAT THREAD. Sorry.

Goals:

I'm working on deepening Alice's CR at the moment, particularly with inmates; who she feels a deal of sympathy for. So far it seems like her best friends could've ended up here!! Clearly that doesn't bear closer examination!!

If there's a plot you'd like to do down the line that involves Warden negligence or bad decisions, she's a definite option.

Personal development I'd like to happen include -

She's not dead at home! She's just been telling people that she is, and trying to consider herself dead, because what actually happened is arguably worse. This has potential to touch on some suicidal ideation discussion, so I won't touch on it unless I know you're cool with it OOC.

Sort of fucked up about the whole thing, and about killing basically a child in the process. It's simultaneously making her more and less sympathetic to murderer CR rn, and they're who's she most likely to speak about it with.

Alice has issues with avoiding conflict, and letting people get away with things for longer than they probably should. When this blows up, it tends to be big and abrupt. She should. Work on not doing that.

Her ex recently told her to take more risks, despite the fact that she takes like, a ton already. And should probably take fewer, because she's been breaking things on the Peregrine as a result.

Etc:
Please feel free to reach out if there's ever an issue, I'm always happy to edit a tag or chat something out.

prompts

[helenite]

desires -

Alice's windfall will secure the safety of her friends. She wants this for its own sake - but also, to close a chapter on that life. It's crucial that she has not included going back with them.

For better and worse, she's relying on these external events to make the hard decision for her: She needs to move on and let go of people in order for both she and they to grow. At some level, Alice knows this, and has known it for the better part of a year. She just hasn't been able to handle ripping off the band-aid.

Alice is terrified to her core of doing too little for the people she loves. She needs to learn at more than a conscious, brush-off level, that protecting people from themselves does everyone a disservice.


consequences -

Alice is an angry person, and she doesn't handle strong feelings well. Nor does anyone in her canon ever call her out on this! Being a bit passive about conflict has meant that people tend to excuse the times she does blow up.

I would really like this to not be the case in TRJ, and for it to have actual ripple effects on her relationships with others. Making yourself intentionally frightening to someone is a pretty fucked up thing to do, and she needs to learn the ways that it will sour her CR. Social consequences will always hit her harder than material ones.

[aposeme]

i know magicians canon diagonally from close cr with a quentin in anothet game and the niffin stuff is f a s c i n a t i n g to me if theres ever a time when she ends up having to poke at it.

besides this we have some fun threads going already ♥

[smugreport]

I know their CR so far is minimal but I really like the chemistry Rhys and Alice have and would love to expand on that!

Charm points:
-Rhys is also a huge nerd once you crack that outer, polished layer
-Also accidentally a murderer whoops! a chance to be vulnerable at some point wrt this? I think even though he can be a shit and minimize/act above other peoples crimes here, if he had Attachment to a person he’d be nicer.

[helenite]

i ALSO like them and would like to expand on them!!

i think cracking into nerd stuff will come more quickly than murder, but i'm definitely down for slotting that in down the line. feels pretty IC for rhys at some point to be like "i'm not like these MURDERERS" and alice to get to the point where she's like "well i am"

[smugreport]

LMAOOO Yeah I was just putting that out there, Rhys isn't going to talk about those murders anytime soon if he can help it but he'd definitely have a "not like other girls inmates" moment sooner than later.

Nerd stuff is super easy though, especially if she shows her cards first. Do you like DnD Alice? Computers???

[dealwiththe]

ooooh idk how to make it happen but alice and lucifer should deffo talk about murder sometime

lucifer has Thoughts and Feelings about it due not just to SOLVING a bunch of murders but also KILLING HIS OWN BROTHER THAT ONE TIME 🙃

[expectaspectre]

I don't have any specific plans but it's definitely on my radar that these two are like, young women of an age with VASTLY different life experiences and personalities and we should do something with them at some point, maybe when some more plot stuff comes up?? Anyway I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN ABOUT ALICE ijs.