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returnjourneymemes2022-02-25 12:25 pm
returnjourney) wrote in returnjourneymemes2022-02-25 12:25 pm
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FEBRUARY PLOTTING MEME
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.
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?
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Contact:
Notes: EST. I'm not able to tag during the day, and don't get home from work until 8:30ish on Monday nights. At the moment, I've been having some trouble with stress and being tired out after work thanks to it being a surprisingly draining job and I have a second job I'm supposed to keep up with as well. To make matters worse for the next week and a half or so, I fell and sprained my wrist, so tagging is just physically difficult even when I want to do it right now. :/ I'm...trying. Things are getting easier at work because we have more staff now and I'm being forced to slow down, lol, but yeah. Just. If I'm slow, that is why, not because I'm mad at anyone or losing the voice or anything. I also play games with my family online (I live across the country from them) once a week usually, and it goes late enough I don't tend to tag much those nights.
Re: what I like/talk about a lot. L-Loki. Um. I'll chat on plurk about what I'm watching and playing currently. Right now I've been working (slowly) on Hades and I just recently started Psychonauts 2. I...watch a lot of Youtube idk. I'm doing a reading challenge this year and it's going well so far so I'll probably be talking about the books I've been reading too. (Tempted to make a Murderbot journal.)
Character: Loki
Canon: MCU
Status: Warden
Info: Loki's here for your magic royal idiot bisexual needs. He's also here for folks who are interested in how being an inmate on another ship worked, or just being an inmate in general. He genuinely wants to help and is more honest and levelheaded than he used to be, but he's also not. Perfect. So he's very much up for conflict and mischief if that's something people are interested in.
Plotting: Lol specifically Loki's going to be a little distracted by Malekith's arrival for a while. He's going to speak to the Navarch (when I am able to get to that) which will likely help calm him down but he's still going to be uneasy and the tension between them will be obvious. It doesn't help that Malekith likes to taunt him and Loki's especially susceptible to that...
He's also going to start looking into ways to utilize magic to make wardening easier. In particular, can he find some way to monitor (or at least check on) inmate whereabouts without it being invasive? Temps and unpaired inmates need looking after too, honestly even more than the paired ones. People will likely see him doing obvious, intent research on this if anyone wants to get involved with that, including just suggesting things he can try to figure out. (Note that this is not how his magic is demonstrated to work in canon so it'd be up to mod discretion what we can actually do, ahahah.)
Goals:
-I'm really looking forward to finding Loki's permanent match. He is going to get so attached, sorry.
-I'd like for him to get more involved with the group at large. I wasn't as able to do that in TLV as I liked. I'm starting small with the magic thing fff.
-Fucking around harder with events. Really wanna get deep into that event shit.
-Talk to the owl talk to the owl TALK TO THE OWL
-Get him thinking about what he's actually going to do with his windfall since he's skeptical he can do all that he'd need/want to with a single one anyway. Subtopic: maybe have him be more sure what those needs/wants are, indecisive bastard that he is.
Etc: Re: consequences... Loki is honestly very affected by his relationships with people so the things that have the most impact on him are hurt related to people that matter to him. Being hurt by them, hurting them (whether he means to or not), seeing them be hurt and he can't protect them. He has entire shifts in mindset based on these things, and refocuses his efforts accordingly. If anyone wanted to influence him, that would be the way to do it!
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second of all, would love to have alice brainstorm w him on the magic surveillance state, maybe we can use the emergency button discussions as an in to that? happy to spam it, or to handwave it, whichever works best for you right now
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dlfkajsl magic surveillance state, love it. And yeah, Loki will instantly become 100% more interested in talking to her when he finds out she's magic so that's a good way in lmao. I'd like to play out that revelation at least, and I think "SO WHAT IS IT WITH YOU AND REMOTE SHIT" after that convo and loki sending a double with viktor is p reasonable as a starter lmfao
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Obviously when your life calms down some. :)
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Loki's coming from somewhere that seemed to lack logic for who was an inmate, and Malekith showing up is already fucking with him and making it harder for him to trust the Navarch's judgment. So I'd rather the friendship not mask the fact that Alex did some bad shit, if that makes sense? Like consistently seeing what Alex did as justified is going to fuck up Loki's trust in the Navarch because, then why did Alex get picked as an inmate?
I think Loki seeing Alex misbehave and/or learning about the bad things he did that weren't justified would help there, and honestly be a way to build up their CR pretty quickly. And it'll keep Loki from having a breakdown about the Navarch's standards not making sense, lmao. We can keep an eye out for events and shit that allow for more of that, but if there's any bad boy shit you were looking to get Alex into, Loki can be involved in that for sure.
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The only problem with Alex misbehaving is he doesn't misbehave the way others do. He sees no point in lashing out violently. He's more likely to have contraband on him quietly, or be in areas where he shouldn't be w/o supervision. Right now the only bad boy shit I have/want for Alex is getting him a knife. Because he is paranoid and does not like not having both useful-tool/potential weapon. Believe me I welcome thoughts on this because it's difficult to figure out. Now, Alex might act out violently (property destruction most likely) if he feels threatened or denied something he worked hard for and it all came to naught. If that makes sense.
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The issue being uhhh is that something that would come up organically before Loki's already hit a "wait why is this guy here alongside Malekith wtf" moment and blue screened to the point of me having trouble playing him fff. Maybe we'll find a way to make it work in the next couple events. But if there's some way for Loki to see Alex doing something and go "oh, yeah, he should be here, that was fucked up", that would be easiest for sure.
Alternatively, maaaaybe it can be a Navarch chat thing. Loki's already asking about Malekith, so maybe it could just be him coming back in a couple months to ask about her (or the admiralty's?) judgment from the opposite direction lmfao. That'd be something I'd run by the mods and you first, though.
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To be fair, https://prototype.fandom.com/wiki/Karen_Parker that's the entry about her. She kind of had no choices her self, but still took part in an operation to try and a) recapture Alex and b) "Cure" him via a developed cancer designed to over-ride the Blackwatch Virus. Alex does not take the betrayal well.
I definitely do not want you blue-screened on Loki. I hate when that happens with chars and I've had it happen to mine before involuntarily. So...hmm. I think the key, and it is ironically something Loki would be very good at doing, is him realizing Alex is here not because he's remorseful per se--but because it's about figuring out who he IS. And who he wants to be now.
Alex has done some monstrous shit, and could very easily BE a monster. He's not even human anymore. But he doesn't have to be, and THAT is the 'redemption' he needs. Is he remorseful? Kinda---he doens't see any other way things could have played out, but he's sorry about that and determined to clean up the mess. But does he need to be prevented from becoming a monster? YES absolutely.
I hope that makes sense.
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What I think would work really well as an answer tho is what you said about preventing him from becoming more of a monster than he already is-- that's, again, something Loki gets and would see as a logical reason to pluck someone out and go "okay you fucked up and we see potential in you but we need to keep you from fucking up again". So stuff with Alex displaying the tendencies you see in him as the ones heading towards monstrous will help head that off for sure.
I apologize if any of this sounds harsh or overly critical. I...made it a special point that no matter how much I love Loki and empathize with his story, I never wanted to make it sound like I thought the worst of what he did was justified and therefore he...didn't actually do anything wrong lmfao. So I'm sensitive to this kind of thing with characters in general, I think. Add on that we legit did have some people on the barge who made very little sense as inmates (and wardens) and Loki starts to panic that he signed on for More Bullshit without realizing, and...yeah. It's a bit of an unreasonable block on my part, I know.
...Also as I was writing this I realized that Loki is much more likely to press x to doubt that Alex is telling him everything than *I* am, so that will help to keep in mind lmao. *I* know Alex is the protagonist of his game but uh Loki doesn't. Guess I was having some ic/ooc bleed there of a particularly dopey kind. Hope I don't have any human shaped viruses I've been blindly trusting irl...
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Dropping the initial vial was absolutely not justified. Real!Alex only did so because he was pissed about being caught. It's very clear he DROPPED it, then was shot. That's def. part of Alex. He also freed Mother of his own will, looking for answers, and she made the infection worse. Alex may be cleaning up the mess, but he's got a lot of death in his wake from both people responsible and people just doing their job.
"What I think would work really well as an answer tho is what you said about preventing him from becoming more of a monster than he already is-- that's, again, something Loki gets and would see as a logical reason to pluck someone out and go "okay you fucked up and we see potential in you but we need to keep you from fucking up again". So stuff with Alex displaying the tendencies you see in him as the ones heading towards monstrous will help head that off for sure." That'll be hard, because the 'monstrous' traits are that he's cold, and not very compassionate. Everything he's done so far on the ship has been because it'll benefit him in some way, even if it seems purely 'helpful'. Ironically, taking his powers away and making him human helped a lot. But he'll definitely be due a breakdown and I'll see about having that be obvious and acting out.
" I apologize if any of this sounds harsh or overly critical. I...made it a special point that no matter how much I love Loki and empathize with his story, I never wanted to make it sound like I thought the worst of what he did was justified and therefore he...didn't actually do anything wrong lmfao. So I'm sensitive to this kind of thing with characters in general, I think. Add on that we legit did have some people on the barge who made very little sense as inmates (and wardens) and Loki starts to panic that he signed on for More Bullshit without realizing, and...yeah. It's a bit of an unreasonable block on my part, I know."
No, it's helpful and I understand entirely. I struggle with that myself sometimes (especially since I also have a Loki muse). It's a hard line to walk empathizing with them bot not justifying or erasing hte bad things they did.
"...Also as I was writing this I realized that Loki is much more likely to press x to doubt that Alex is telling him everything than *I* am, so that will help to keep in mind lmao. *I* know Alex is the protagonist of his game but uh Loki doesn't. Guess I was having some ic/ooc bleed there of a particularly dopey kind. Hope I don't have any human shaped viruses I've been blindly trusting irl..." Let's hope not. But Loki SHOULD doubt him. Compare notes with Lucifer. Take Alex into the SIRE or request his file... :) Alex is definitely a very gray anti-hero at best, even though he's the protag.
Also hashing all this stuff out often helps me. I'm happy to do so.
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I'm actually really into the idea of him revealing himself to be mostly self-interested as a way to complicate things! And there's lots of ways to do that, even if he's not, you know, going to steal an ATV on an alien planet and try to escape, lmfao
God, I'm looking forward to permapairs so wardens get some JUICY DETAILS out of those files, man. That'll help with Loki's dumb paranoia a ton, I'm sure :T
Thank you for chatting this out with me. <3 Again I'm sorry if any of it was hurtful. I have a much better understanding now, I think.
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I volunteer to have Grace be a test subject (willingly or unwillingly) for using magic to Track People, especially if it could produce interesting results (such as showing her on a flight path that clearly takes her, like, THROUGH WALLS)!! If that could cause some interesting fallout :3c??
Beyond that, she might pick Loki's brain a little more as far as what being a Graduated Inmate Who Came Back To Warden looks like and what his experiences were previously and how they can be improved upon. She really knows absolutely zilch about what went on on That Other Ship and the differences and actually wants to Be Good To Inmates so she's kind of aiming as high as possible and since William's a big cryptic weirdo even on his best days... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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brb editing William's titles on fandom wiki to include Man in Black, Big Cryptic Weirdo...
BUT YEAH, no, that's something Loki is up for talking about, particularly because describing some events to someone who's experienced so little of the weirdness we're bound to get into is just, A+. no really we did just live a hallmark movie, it was weird, there was a ferris wheel, i don't know man...
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i just want you to know i did read that as "William's titties" at first glance. i'm so tired
YEAH NO PLEASE I'm dying for that kind of info, if only because everyone is trying to be fuckin' Inspector Clouseau or whatever and logic themselves an answer as to What Goin' On, so a little "actually this is all nonsense and the sooner you accept that none of this will ever make sense the better this will go for you" would help Grace and her outlook A LOT ACTUALLY