(Furryfaire) Wren and Ashley
Okay, the family lines on Furryfaire are pretty screwy. That's what happens when you get a relatively small set of players playing multiple characters over several generations and many of those characters range from "long-lived" to effectively immortal.
I never really planned on the conception of Wren (via Arion and Dove) and Ashley (via Shaden and Fireheart), but it had at least a few interesting possibilities. Given Arion's a deity and Fireheart is an avatar, it made sense that the pair would be raised by Shaden and Dove in Drachenkeep. It was a stretch from my current baseline hybrid philosophy, wherein I generally take the physical species/form of one parent and fur patterns or specific minor traits from the other. I had a little image in my head when I started thinking about it of a pair of princesses with enough of a mischievous streak to occasionally impersonate one another. So I split the difference, went with the mothers' vulpine species and settled on a gray coloration as sort of a neutral middle ground, but went ahead and gave one blue eyes and the other green.
As the idea developed, I had a pair of psionically-active "sisters" who can talk behind everyone's backs and confuse the heck out of people if they really try. I tried to distinguish them a little bit, leading to Wren being just a touch more flighty and adventuresome, but they're meant to be able to tread the same ground, so they should be similar "by design."
As with a lot of my characters, though, the trouble starts when figuring out what to do with these characters and how to integrate them into the world. Arguably, this was more a problem with this pair than some because they came about sort of off-grid. Playing them in "public" has never really been an option or consideration. They exact age in the Furryfaire timeline is a little vague, being born somewhere in the downtime. That also means interaction possibilities have been decidedly limited (though that usually happens regardless). I mean, what do you do with two princesses who idolize adventure? Send them on an adventure? Well, that requires someone to run it, which is in short supply. Put them through courtly RP? That seems likely to feel someone boring to them, though we have done some.
Mostly, they've interacted with Rei, kitsune courtier. That's not an inherently bad thing, but it might have been something of an uphill effort to start with. Someone aspiring to a political, courtly life might be the least appealing partner for someone who grew up in a political, courtly life and romanticizes something else. I wouldn't call that situation "doomed to failure," but it seems less than ideal. It doesn't really help that scenes in which characters take a stroll through the gardens and talk to one another about their days bore me more often than not. I get enough mundane daily activities in real life, I usually look for something a little different when roleplaying. I actually had another character, Rei's brother Kokage, pick up on this and start nudging Rei to working on his swordsmanship in an effort to make Rei more interesting to the "sisters" (which speaks to Kokage's desire to get a foot into politics from behind the scenes), but that hasn't really changed the overall dynamic very much.
Similarly, the romantic angle didn't really feel like it was working to me. Rei officially wanting to court Wren could work, but... there just didn't feel like there was any spark to that relationship. In a fuller, more "real" world, they could probably both find someone they'd be more interested in, but in the absence of other characters to play with, it's hard to really say "you're not the one for me." And I wish I could easily point to what's lacking, but that sort of explanation eludes me.
They have seen some play training under Shaden, which is perhaps closer to the action I'd like to play, myself. And with benefits of telepathy and telekinesis, they've got the potential to be holy terrors in any serious fight. But they're not exactly free to run off to any major conflict and there's no real action to engage it at a political level (even on-grid), so prospects of doing much of that are slim.
So... yeah... not sure what to do with them any more than I am most of my characters.
I never really planned on the conception of Wren (via Arion and Dove) and Ashley (via Shaden and Fireheart), but it had at least a few interesting possibilities. Given Arion's a deity and Fireheart is an avatar, it made sense that the pair would be raised by Shaden and Dove in Drachenkeep. It was a stretch from my current baseline hybrid philosophy, wherein I generally take the physical species/form of one parent and fur patterns or specific minor traits from the other. I had a little image in my head when I started thinking about it of a pair of princesses with enough of a mischievous streak to occasionally impersonate one another. So I split the difference, went with the mothers' vulpine species and settled on a gray coloration as sort of a neutral middle ground, but went ahead and gave one blue eyes and the other green.
As the idea developed, I had a pair of psionically-active "sisters" who can talk behind everyone's backs and confuse the heck out of people if they really try. I tried to distinguish them a little bit, leading to Wren being just a touch more flighty and adventuresome, but they're meant to be able to tread the same ground, so they should be similar "by design."
As with a lot of my characters, though, the trouble starts when figuring out what to do with these characters and how to integrate them into the world. Arguably, this was more a problem with this pair than some because they came about sort of off-grid. Playing them in "public" has never really been an option or consideration. They exact age in the Furryfaire timeline is a little vague, being born somewhere in the downtime. That also means interaction possibilities have been decidedly limited (though that usually happens regardless). I mean, what do you do with two princesses who idolize adventure? Send them on an adventure? Well, that requires someone to run it, which is in short supply. Put them through courtly RP? That seems likely to feel someone boring to them, though we have done some.
Mostly, they've interacted with Rei, kitsune courtier. That's not an inherently bad thing, but it might have been something of an uphill effort to start with. Someone aspiring to a political, courtly life might be the least appealing partner for someone who grew up in a political, courtly life and romanticizes something else. I wouldn't call that situation "doomed to failure," but it seems less than ideal. It doesn't really help that scenes in which characters take a stroll through the gardens and talk to one another about their days bore me more often than not. I get enough mundane daily activities in real life, I usually look for something a little different when roleplaying. I actually had another character, Rei's brother Kokage, pick up on this and start nudging Rei to working on his swordsmanship in an effort to make Rei more interesting to the "sisters" (which speaks to Kokage's desire to get a foot into politics from behind the scenes), but that hasn't really changed the overall dynamic very much.
Similarly, the romantic angle didn't really feel like it was working to me. Rei officially wanting to court Wren could work, but... there just didn't feel like there was any spark to that relationship. In a fuller, more "real" world, they could probably both find someone they'd be more interested in, but in the absence of other characters to play with, it's hard to really say "you're not the one for me." And I wish I could easily point to what's lacking, but that sort of explanation eludes me.
They have seen some play training under Shaden, which is perhaps closer to the action I'd like to play, myself. And with benefits of telepathy and telekinesis, they've got the potential to be holy terrors in any serious fight. But they're not exactly free to run off to any major conflict and there's no real action to engage it at a political level (even on-grid), so prospects of doing much of that are slim.
So... yeah... not sure what to do with them any more than I am most of my characters.
Hmm. That is a problem, isn't it. Well, I can see what I can do shake things up a bit more, perhaps. Let me think about this some.
ReplyDeleteThrow them into an adventure? Mmk. I might be able to do something about that after my move.
ReplyDeleteSome interesting thoughts, though I'm not sure it's anything to go with at present, given you've got things going with Sarine and Co. currently. ;)
ReplyDelete