(no subject)

[mnt_raph]

What about your characters makes you want to continue to play them,what brings you joy from them. Not what originally drew you to them,but what makes you keep them through all the purges, dramatic moments,nervous breakdowns, late assignments, finals week, thesis/researchprojects, etc.


Raphael
I'm sure I've said it in a million memes before, but Turtles was my first canon and minor league fandom. Yeah, you read that right...fandom. There might have been round-robin fic-a-thons. There might have been people drawing me fan art. I might have even had a letter posted back when I was a wee ickle thing with even less tact and spelling than I do now. Gaze upon this admission and know fear.

But this isn't about the past so much as it's about Raph. The Raph I play in Milliways isn't exactly the Raph from canon. One of the main reasons I play him is because a vast majority of you won't know the difference. Nearly two years of rp has been banked on the fact that at no point could someone tell me what I was doing was wrong. I have to tell you, this is a rather large selling point to the big lug.

I've always kind of thought of him as everyone's favorite ex-boyfriend. He's the kind of guy that's a pain in the ass to deal with, but once you realize you don't have to deal with him, that he's no longer your responsibility, he's actually good to have around. A self-centered prick bitching about how there's no hot water one second, and then silently standing a solitary vigil over his loved ones in the dead of winter the next.

I like playing Raph because he's dumb, but not stupid. I like the fact that sometimes it's really hard to play dumb, and other times...um...I'm not actually playing. I like that he just hits things, or gets a night of good sleep, and everything is better. It's never great, but better is nothing to sneeze at. I like that he's a marshmallow, and despite his best efforts, a hero at heart.

I like that Raph at his core is a tragic character, and that his anger at the world stems from the fact that he's aware of his own tragedy. He will never have a normal life, and his wish to be left alone will be granted in spades. They're not kidding when they warn you about that sort of thing. Not to blow the ending for you, but he dies alone and long after all of his family has beaten him to the finish line. Slow and cranky does not win the race for our Raphael.


Michaelangelo
Much like his older brother Raph, Mike is not a canon character. In canon most of the woah, baby remarks are actually made by Raph. I never liked that, and attributed all of the perverse stuff to Mike instead. Why? What, did you suddenly forget about that "bank" thing from the previous entry? For shame. Reading is fundamental, after all.

Initially I pulled Mike free from the ether because I really didn't trust anyone else to play him. Yeah, you read that right. I didn't trust you to play him so I figured I had to. How sad and possessive is that? Any of the other boys I could handle being played any number of ways, but not Mike. Mike has a very specific voice in my head and I just wouldn't be able to deal with anyone else attempting it. And yet...I still consider myself a Raph girl. Go figure?

Right before I picked him up I was having numerous chats on IM with people about his personality. The one that rang the loudest was: A willing hole and heartbeat. Yeah, even from the get go Mike was going to be a whore when it came to flirting. Of course by then Raph was already human, and so it was only a matter of time before Mike went that way as well, but that's for a different meme all together.

So....Mike. Mike is the one of the four that really likes being what he is. He likes being a turtle, he likes the things his body can do. He's just happy as is. Simple minds have simple pleasures. Music, Sex and Cookies, and before he traded in his shell for a pink-skin suit Music, Laughter, and Cookies would have been more than enough.

Mike, for me, has always been the most talented of the four. He's the one with the most skill, speed, and promise...but it's a promise that goes unfulfilled because he'd rather make life a joke than play the straight man. Keeping the family together is his prime directive, and considering his family that's a full time job right there. If Mike has to make himself the punchline to get a smile, then so be it. More often than not he's playing dumb to pull a smile, but he's really not stupid. Any good actor will tell you that comedy is harder to pull off than a tear jerker any day, and that's why I like playing Mikey.

I have to admit that I don't have much of a plot for Mike. He lives happily ever after because it doesn't occur to him to do anything else.


The Oompa Loompas
If someone ever asks you if you want to be an entire race of people from a well known children's book, you say yes. No really, do it. It's fun. You can take the main quasi-antagonist from the book and make him a Nazi, and then just watch people's heads explode as you write filk until your brain leaks out your ears.

If there's a better way to spend a Wednesday night, then I haven't heard about it.
Sure they're not in nearly enough, especially since they were designed to be a Milli-channel sort of thing, but what can you do? There are only so many rhyming couplets one can make with "dee", "doo" and "dum".

Plus, along the way they found social order and political constructs. Don't you just hate it when your characters get away from you and become Communistists with Isolationistic tendencies, because I sure know that I do.


[more to come]

Comments

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Aww. Your comments on Raph made me sniffle. I've only read his threads here and there, but this comment really struck me:

his anger at the world stems from the fact that he's aware of his own tragedy.


... that's so sad.

And... ow. He dies alone? Really? I had no idea the Turtles even had a specific ending like that in canon, having only watched the cartoon.