cityarcade | MEME: Reverse Questions

I'm Stefanie and I play:

Katie Marks | All Good Things |

toanend
Hannah Weaver | Crazy, Stupid, Love. |

doublenegative
Eden McCain | Heroes |

wishesandsmoke
Olive Penderghast | Easy A |

floozyfacade
Cameron Winklevoss | The Social Network |

makeafairfight
COMING SOON: Gwen Stacy | The Amazing Spider-Man |

makeithome

I'm going to sleep now. Questions, answers, and tags to come.

What is your favorite thing about each of your pups? Least favorite?

KATIE
FAVORITE: What I love most about Katie is how rich a character she is. While on the outside, she seems very sweet and pleasant and bright, there's a lot of shadow under the surface, and that isn't native to her, it's not who she was growing up, but it's unshakable now. She's exactly the kind of character I always wanted to write myself, honestly, because I feel like female characters tend to be extremely limited in the media. You can be the victim or the aggressor, the weak woman or the strong one. We don't get enough multidimensional women like Katie, who is incredibly flawed and can easily be perceived as weak in the way she's constantly going back to a man who abuses her physically and emotionally and who cheats on her, but there's a strength to the way she deals with it all and her plans to escape, and she's more than a victim. She's flawed, too, and becomes a little bent herself, and I like being able to play a character type usually perceived as sort of feeble and foolish and delve into how it's a lot more complicated than that. It's definitely something I've never played before and I find her really exciting.

LEAST FAVORITE: Man, this is kind of awkward to say. My least favorite thing about Katie is actually about me, and it's how easily I can put myself in her shoes and understand what it's like to be emotionally abused in that way and to love your attacker and to make those excuses and try to stick it out, and then to plan desperately for escape. That I can empathize so fully with her (and the same goes for Harley at TR) is a fact that, when it hits me all over again, can be devastating to sit with, because it's not something you want to know about yourself.

HANNAH
FAVORITE: Ironically, my favorite thing about Hannah is probably the same as my least favorite about Katie -- that I find her incredibly easy to connect with and understand. We're at sort of similar places in our lives, at least emotionally. We're in our late 20s, at that point where we're trying to differentiate between what we think we're supposed to be and who we really are, and to accept that real self and be that person. She really is a coming of age story, despite being 28 now and engaged and in a nice career; she's still figuring herself out. And it's fun for me to write that story and it's kind of comforting, too. I feel like, of all my characters, she's actually the one I'm most like, and it's nice because she's a very hopeful version of that. She has flaws and foibles, but she's ultimately an optimistic vision of what that point in life is.

LEAST FAVORITE: In a lot of ways, Hannah is so incredibly ordinary that she's not necessarily the most exciting character or the kind that makes people want to tag her, so it's very easy for her to fall behind and get less attention. I worry that, between that and the route she wants to take in life, she's one that could get stagnant very easily.

EDEN
FAVORITE: What I love most about Eden is her heart. She had a really rough childhood and she went through some awful things, and she grew up and she abused her powers and drank too much, and basically she was in bad shape, but she's never been a bad person. Her heart has always been good, and she took all the bad and turned it into compassion. She's adaptable and loving, and what she took from her life wasn't to become tough, it was that everyone deserves another chance. I really admire that.

LEAST FAVORITE: It is sometimes frustrating, because I went a long time feeling like she was just stuck and I'd have to drop her, but now she's opened out a little more, so that's not so bad.

OLIVE
FAVORITE: Oh, god, I don't even know. Everything. I guess it's that she's likewise so adaptable and full of love, so even when she's down, she's optimistic and trying to endure and see everything as an adventure and learn as much as she can and make others happy. She has such a big heart, and so everything I do with her makes me feel good. It can be the toughest, saddest thread, and I still walk away feeling better because she's just such a kind soul.

LEAST FAVORITE: Because she makes me the happiest, I pin so much importance on her that I'm liable to take things involving her unnecessarily personally and be a crazy person about them. Like, I've gotten a lot better over the years about bleed and kind of letting things go, but I can be crazy sensitive and protective about her, because that kind of a source of happiness is really precious to me.

CAMERON
FAVORITE: He's so genuine and sweet and completely freaking oblivious. Like, he's this incredibly honorable guy who takes offense at the idea of using his wealth and all to get ahead and he gives others the benefit of the doubt, and at the same time, he's got his arrogant streak and this sense of pride and he doesn't really get that he always gets special treatment by virtue of being rich and handsome and connected. And I'm enjoying playing him in places where he doesn't have those advantages and he can kind of learn how different things really are.

LEAST FAVORITE: Cameron is the kind of guy who can be politely charming and get along well with people, but he's not as social as his brother. It's harder for him to make real connections. As a result, he really doesn't know anyone but his girlfriend and he's not necessarily the kind of person that draws the most tags because his niceness isn't, like, super exciting, so it can be a drag, not knowing what to do with him.

What sort of plans do you have for your people?

My plans are pretty vague, as in I don't know when I'll get to them or how I'll go about them, but I have ideas for places I want to go with each of them.

Katie: I'd like to continue on this arc with her of her coping with the things she lived through (or didn't??? She doesn't know! No one knows) in her relationship with David and becoming more self-oriented as a result. Being away from him makes it easier both to recognize even more what they had become and how abusive he was, but also to idealize the love they shared because she's likewise distanced from the abuse. She's trying to make a life of her own, and I think she has to flounder some, because she's not used to it. She moved to New York at 19, met David her first week or so out there, married him two years later, and hasn't done much with her life and certainly not without his (financial) support, so this kind of independence is both difficult, desired, and incredible for her. Um, so that, and her first item will open her eyes to how badly the night she came to Darrow may have gone.

Hannah: With Hannah, things are complicated because they're simpler, if that makes sense. She's as happy with this life as she's going to be, she has a job she loves, a fiance she's crazy about. She wants the whole traditional package, marriage and babies along with her career, so the challenge here is not to fall into the same trap a lot of similar RP relationships fall into, which is allowing those things to make a character stagnate. I want to explore those things as being every bit as interesting and exciting as something a little darker, especially since recent complications with her family and the story of how she came into the world and all make her really particular about how she wants to handle things.

Eden: Oh, so many things. Dealing with her power over the long-term and how she handles the temptation of that and her alcoholism, that's a major thing. So is finding a fulfilling career for her. I want her to be able to go back to school because she never went to college. I want badly for her to find love, because she's never had that. I actually want her to have a kid someday as well, because she wants it, deep down; she has a serious maternal streak in need of an outlet. I want to pursue her finding a way to have a real, normal life that she never had before, but also to find a way to accept/cope with her ability.

Olive: Is so. excited. to go back to/finish high school and go on to college. But one of the things I love most about Olive is that, while some parts of her are very predictable, others aren't. She's so given to roll with whatever happens that plans are always changing and I have absolutely no idea what she'll actually pursue in her schooling. I do know I want to give her a homeplot later this year to help with her homesickness, as well as a bump or two along the way for her and Eduardo, because almost all of their problems have been externally sourced, and it's good for them to cope with issues that crop up with just the two of them.

Cameron: Is currently at risk for a drop. I love him, but I'm having trouble getting him out and circulating, and if he doesn't develop a social circle beyond his girlfriend, I'll wind up having to let him go. So the plan is just to spark more connections for him.

Gwen: Well, first I want to debut her hopefully next weekend. XD She's young and walks this border between recklessness and responsibility, mostly because she's reckless in the name of being responsible, and I feel like she could easily tie into a lot of big action plots, get into a lot of inadvertent danger, do science, things like that. I'm hoping to get a Peter Parker somewhere down the line, but in the meanwhile, she'll have to cope with two major losses in her life on top of being away from home long-term for probably the first time in her life. So basically exploring how she handles everything on her own and getting her in danger. :D

What are the chances of Eden actively using her powers once she knows (if she doesn't already) that she can use them again? And CAN I PLAY? :D

1) You can absolutely play!

2) That is kind of a long-term... arc... thingy? Like, she is aware she has them back; she figured that out pretty quickly, and she has used it since her arrival when in a pinch. After the way things used to be, though, she's trying really hard not to do so, because she kind of feels like her powers fucked up her life as much as they saved her from how fucked up her life was before. She doesn't want it to go to her head and it's scary after years without, plus she learned the hard way it doesn't make her infallible, but it's scary because part of her has missed that kind of power and control. So definitely that's something she's going to be struggling with over the next while, her inner conflict with the desire to stay, for lack of a better word, clean and the temptation to feel as strong and powerful as her ability allows her to feel.

Selfish question. How do you think Eden might feel about having Mohinder around in Darrow?

Wonderfully, deliciously conflicted. On one hand, there was, briefly, a Mohinder on the island, so she's had her chance to sort of make peace with everything that happened and thus to move on with her new shot at life; she has strong feelings for someone else now and she's had a couple of boyfriends, and it's been, what, five years since she knew him for five days? Give or take. So it should be totally easy to handle. But on the other hand, I think she's still very well aware, forgiveness aside, that she screwed up, that she could have done things better, that she lost her shot at something that could have been special, because I feel like, while she'd probably managed to get around plenty in her L.A. days, she'd never really had someone she thought she could connect with on a deeper level. And so there are these leftover old feelings and a lot of regret and nostalgia, along with the knowledge that it's been a considerable amount of time for them both, so maybe she's not even someone who matters to him anymore.

SHE JUST HAS A LOT OF FEELINGS OKAY. SHE WISHES SHE COULD BAKE HIM A CAKE MADE OF RAINBOWS AND SMILES. :(

How soon until Gwen comes? Because I reeeeeaaallllly want her to show up soon.

Very soon! I like to make sure I have at least one or two threads under way for all my other characters before I allow myself to debut someone new, but now that I have that squared away, all I have left to do, really, is write up a personality section and inventory to put on her wiki and get the debut done. So I'm actually hoping to be able to do that this coming weekend!

I am so stupid excited for it you have no idea. I apologize in advance for the level that Kaine will try and be all up in her business like a creeper.

Which leads to the question... how will she feel about this weird clone of her boyfriend who will probably stalk her for her own protection?

Oh man, the feelings will be complicated, which is so much fun. I'll be bringing her from almost the end of the movie, shortly after her father's death and Peter's broken up with her, so the idea of anyone doing anything she hasn't asked for for her supposed own good is one she's not too pleased with. She's bound to be somewhat resentful, both because the whole thing with these guys making decisions for her is not sitting too well right now, and because he'll obviously remind her of Peter but isn't him.

On the other hand, I feel like her resentment is more intellectual than emotional, because while she'd like to think she can take care of herself, I'm sure she's actually quite used to being protected in a very different but still similar manner, given, you know, her dad. Plus she's not in the happiest place given these two losses and she's a pretty sweet girl, so she might actually find it kind of comforting, whether or not she wants to admit it.

I'M PRETTY EXCITED, TOO.

She should also be prepared for an onslaught of "Let me tell you my origin story!" because there pretty much wouldn't be a Kaine without a Gwen and he has no one here to tell his origin to (well, he does but he won't) but he'll probably feel like he could/should tell her.

And when Peter arrives, first day, Kaine is going to take him to a building and show him how to save people who are falling without breaking their neck.

Awww, she will totally listen to his origin story. The whole thing will be weird for her, but she also copes with weird pretty well.

That is a really good idea, because movie Peter apparently thinks he can just web people up by the torso and be just fine. Every time I watch the bit where he does that to Gwen, I'm sitting there like, "Peter, this is a horrible plan."

oh jesus I never thought about that moment as horrifying foreshadowing before

and now I am

(it's a blast)

AND HE DOES IT TO THE KID ON THE BRIDGE, TOO?

every last time, I sit there like, hiding my face, just

Peter, stop

How are your transfer pups dealing with being in Darrow vs the Island?

Would your female pups come to a slumber party?

Hannah infinitely prefers it because she's incredibly ambitious and career-oriented. It's hard on her that she's still not home, because she wanted to have the wedding there, but it's a relief for her because she's terrible at being idle, so if she can't be home, she'd rather be here.

Eden misses the island, because she was there for so long that it's really the first real home she ever had, but she lost so many people that it's not a major, major loss in that respect, especially with Lily here. It's also a struggle for her, though, because she has her power back for the first time in years, and so there's a lot of temptation, which she's working hard to resist. That was one of the big reliefs of the island for her, beyond, you know, being alive — having one less temptation to try and break free of.

Olive is likewise torn. Being in Darrow means she has lots of opportunities to do more with herself and finish school, which helps to distract her from her homesickness, and it helps that she knows Eduardo is happier here, too. That said, she misses her friends on the island pretty badly. The island was the first place she really had that many close friendships since she was really little, and it's tough to lose them so soon.

Cameron also does better when he has more to do with himself, although it remains a major loss for him, because the things waiting for him are, you know, stuff like going to Oxford for his graduate degree. On the other hand, he'd never see Jenny again if he went home, so living with a girl for the first time is both a big deal for him and important in that he's not ready to lose her. On the island, all he really had left was the loss of his brother.

They would! Well, probably not Hannah so much, and Eden would depend on if she knew Sybil first, but Olive is 100% in and Katie would likely go!

Cool. Thank you, it's given me an insight into your characters! YAY!

Also WHOOO.

MEME: Reverse Questions

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